It’s the sounds you remember—the relentless pounding on the roof, the sluicing rush of a waterfall on the windows. And then there’s the smell. But that came later. Much later.

June 15, 1972. A time of hope and excitement. I’d scored a faculty position at the Scranton Penn State University Campus, my husband Mike took a position as counselor in Hazleton. We split the difference and moved to Kingston, on and across the river from Wilkes Barre, PA.  Kevin was four. Our foster daughter, Miriam, was 15.

The apartment was a modest sized three bedroom, facing south, perhaps 20 yards from the levee looming 40+ feet, sheltering us from the placid Susquehanna River. We were on the second floor.  Miriam and I took our time unpacking, hanging curtains, arguing over where to put the plates, how to position the bookcases. We didn’t have much back then so each thing was precious and required careful thought and placement. The pictures and books and records took center stage. I still hear the melodies that Miriam played incessantly—Carly Simon was her latest obsession. Kevin had his books and the cat and seemed content in his world.

Agnes began off the Yucatan Peninsula on June 14. By the 19th it was a hurricane. On the 21st it made its run up the coast, landing in New York, then looping west and becoming nearly stationary over central PA.  From June 20-25 the Susquehanna Basin saw up to 18” of rain. It started in New York, the crest moving through Painted Post and Elmira, then barreling down the narrow corridor, pushing at the levees. The Wyoming Valley was no stranger to floods so they built walls to protect the cities. The walls held until the crest topped 41.5 feet, busting through and over with the raging river spilling its guts. They called it the 100 year flood. We called it Armageddon.

Mike was sent home from work on the 20th, everyone was sent home. The waters lapped at the base of the bridges, choked with trees and whole houses that had been ripped from their foundations further upstream. Wavelets lapped at the tops of the levees. We walked those levees, taking turns, on watch. The neighbors downstairs moved all their belongings up to our apartment. Like us, they’d just moved in and everything was still in boxes. We thought we were safe on the second floor.

We were wrong.

The pounding on the door came at 5:45 a.m. Fire police screaming ‘Get out. Get out. Get out.’ We had a couple of bags packed. Cat food and a litter box. A cooler with some food. A couple stuffed animals for Kevin. We jammed ourselves into the VW Beetle, 2 kids, a cat—and made a run to the west, uphill through Kingston. We got shuffled to a school auditorium to wait and see. It didn’t take long.

Twenty minutes. That’s all we had, twenty minutes. The levee breached right next to our building and released a wall of water, mud and debris. Within minutes it was covered, gone. The gasoline storage depot just south of us went next, the monster tanks floating on their sides, spilling their contents, leaving the surface iridescent and stinking. A tractor trailer was driven through the K-Mart just up the block. We never saw the bodies but we heard about them, the cemetery close to our complex. Small relief that.

The rain finally tapered off but the worst was yet to come, the river bleeding out, her lifeblood easing up the steep hill and we worried we weren’t high enough but there was nowhere else to go. The entire half of the state was going under water, washing out roads, bridges. You could see the smoke over on the Wilkes Barre side as the city floated in a bizarre hellfire as gas lines erupted. They were the lucky ones. Insurance covered their losses. Fire wasn’t an Act of God. The flood was.

We looked at each other and as one packed our few belongings, gathered the cat and piled into the VW. We needed to get somewhere, anywhere. We headed west and south, making our way over the mountain, then dropping down along country roads, washed out and leaving only a narrow width for the VW. It was insane but our world had gone mad until all seemed normal. We made it first to Mike’s family, then mine in NJ.

It took days, a week, then more and we still couldn’t get back into the area to assess the damage. I don’t recall exactly when the tears came. My father was ill, too ill to bear the stress of all of us descending on him but he was the one who comforted and we kept it between the two of us. We never mentioned it again.

Squads of workmen hired by the apartment complex had already been there. Everything we owned was in a mountain of debris in the quad. There was nothing to recover other than a few dishes they’d missed. The water ran in the fawcett in the kitchen. But there was nothing to clean.

Mud. Slimy, oily, slick, horrendous mud. Ankle deep or worse. Some people pawed through the debris trying to find a precious bit of furniture or a memento of a life now vanished.

The smell accosted the senses—the rank odor of despair, anger, fear, hopelessness. You never forget that smell. It is worse than death.

The Red Cross was there and I will forever be grateful for their helping hand. The government was overwhelmed but the Small Business Bureau did what they could. Renters without assets fared poorly in the equation. We found a used mobile home miles away.

Our lives were never the same.

We still, Kevin and I, feel unsettled when heaven’s floodgates release. We live on a hill now.

We will always live on a hill.