As the River Preys On Homes, a Hunt for New Housing Begins : Floods: All 160 residents of a town that will be uninhabitable for six months find refuge with relatives, friends or wherever they can rent.

From the outside, Jan Boyle likes to think, the new place is not so bad. An old white farmhouse with uneven green trim, it is shaded by walnut trees and surrounded on three sides by tall stands of corn.

Inside, however . . . well, “the dirt makes my skin crawl,” she says. But it will have to do. “Robert,” she tells her husband, as much for her own benefit as his, “it’s high and dry, and it’s shelter.”

This is more than can be said of 477 Meadow St., once their residence of 21 years. It has been claimed by the Mississippi River in this season of epic floods.

Like so many other Midwest riverbank towns, Niota lost its levee two weeks ago. Just as the evacuation plan called for, virtually all of the suddenly homeless had someplace to go. A sister’s, a friend’s--in the Boyles’ case, an aunt’s.

But in a matter of days, the first surveys by boat made it clear that the population of 160 needs to make long-term arrangements. Niota will not be habitable again for six months or more.

In a sequence repeated up and down the river, the people of Niota are scrambling and scattering as the painful realization sets in: They need to find someplace else to call home. And someplace else generally is “not what we’re used to,” as Jan Boyle said. Some have borrowed camper trailers and set them up in the yards of their family or friends. Competition has developed for the limited number of apartments in Nauvoo, a town of 1,100 on high ground eight miles southwest. Families are separating as husbands look for quarters near their jobs, while wives and children head out where they can find more room.

Others have tried the Boyles’ solution. They are renting, and attempting to fix up, abandoned old houses on nearby farms. The owners had figured they’d simply tear down the buildings someday.

Until the flood, Jan Boyles had lived in Niota proper--two beauty shops, two taverns, no stoplights-- all her 51 years. When Robert retired in January from his prison guard job, they finally redecorated their one-story white frame house.

They painted the living room walls pale pink and installed a light lavender carpet. They laid down gray stone-look linoleum in the kitchen. They got new curtains.

Despite the cold, wet spring, the garden was thriving, full of petunias, prickly pears, columbines “and my creeping phlox,” Boyle moaned. “Oh, my creeping phlox. I’d been trying for years to get creeping phlox to come up and last year it finally took hold.”

In April, the river rose up and it never really went down. When the hard rains started falling at the end of June, the tiny town fought back hard. The local road commissioner lost count at 250,000 sandbags. They dumped more sand, graded it, covered it.

On Saturday, July 10, “just to keep my mind off things,” Jan Boyle mopped her floors.

That night, a few hundred yards of sand slumped and flattened under a plastic sheet. The river, more than 20 feet high, poured silently over.

By Sunday night, the water rippled in Niota’s two streets.

Jan and Bob Boyle and their 21-year-old son, Jason, went to her Aunt Emmaline’s house in the country, as planned. Jan’s mother, Mae Moore, who lived two doors away on Meadow Street, moved to her sister’s as well. Four dogs and two cats went along.

A surveyor had come through the town when the river was 19.1 feet deep. He told the Boyles to expect about three inches of water on their floors.

He was wrong. The Mississippi stands three feet deep in their home.

The greenish-brown water is mixed with gasoline and diesel fuel, the result of long-ago dumpings when Amoco Pipeline Co. changed the product in its line through town, according to the president of the local fire district.

As the waters recede, oily stripes of residue are visible across the buildings. There is fear that the drinking water is contaminated.

And the damage is most likely not done. Over the weekend, crews were still struggling to build a new rock road out to the levee and heal a new round of holes. New rains set the river to rising again.

Emergency help is available at the Appanoose Faith Presbyterian Church. Stacks of donated food, drink and diapers are there for the taking; volunteers cook meals; the sheriff drops by. But there are no offers of shelter on the bulletin board.

Mary Ann Reed, the teacher overseeing the hubbub at the church, understood. “Most people are looking for something for at least a year,” she said.

Everyone knew of the waiting list at a Nauvoo complex known hereabouts as “Cardboard City” for the thinness of its walls. Patty Haigh managed to find out, through a friend, the phone number and name of the owner, a St. Louis stockbroker. Her husband Mike called again and again.

It took five days, but the broker yielded. A two-bedroom apartment would be available, he said, as soon as it was cleaned. The Haighs said they’d do it themselves.

Patty Haigh and the three children, who had been staying with relatives, drove to the church for some disinfectant, a bucket and a sponge. At the last minute, she grabbed a fly swatter, too. “We need this,” she said merrily. “We have June bugs.”

The Boyles found their farmhouse in a similarly indirect way. Jan Boyle’s aunt had noticed the place off an unnamed road leading to the main highway. She thought she knew the owner’s name.

It turned out she had the wrong man, but he told them who the right person was. Bob Boyle drove to Nauvoo to search for him and inquire about the rent. But he couldn’t bring himself to say he’d take it. “He never, ever lived like this before in his life,” his wife said.

Then Jan Boyle stopped by for another glimpse and noticed cigarette butts on the ground. “Somebody else has been there,” she told her husband that night. “They’re looking. We’re going to lose it.”

And so they moved in, despite the nicotine stains, the buckling linoleum, the shaky floor. They are living with the bright purple paint in one room and bright green in another--all peeling, of course. They patched a chimney hole with a white paper plate. They found a newspaper from 1927 in a bedroom.

Now, while Bob works on the levee, Jan and Mae sit at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, smoking, and compiling lists on yellow legal pads of who gave them what. The Krauses brought a brown recliner. Jack Lamb in Dallas City contributed a bed. Jan’s cousin’s ex-husband dropped off 12 gallons of paint.

The outpouring is a comfort. “And we have so much more space, nine whole rooms,” Jan Boyle said. “I love space. And this old refrigerator is so quiet, I keep opening it to see if it’s working. My new one at home just rattles like a threshing machine.”

She’s been talking herself into acceptance. She knows she has to. She knows she’ll be there for a while.

“If it’s a cold house this winter,” she mused, “we could close down everything and live in that big room and the kitchen. Upstairs is out because there’s no electric up there. We have electric heat in the kitchen.

“If I had to, I could manage,” she said, and then sighed. Her gray hair ran dark with sweat in the back. “If I had to,” she repeated. “If I had to.” She stubbed another cigarette out.