Days of flooding
RE “High-Water Hell” [Sept. 18]: The 1927 flooding was not confined to the Mississippi River. The Missouri, Ohio and Arkansas rivers and their many tributaries all flooded.
The entire area commonly defined as the Mississippi River Basin -- which stretches north to Montana-Minnesota-Wisconsin, west to Colorado and east to Ohio-Pennsylvania -- had flooding.
The flooding struck when I was just a year old. We were living in Ponca City, Okla., at the time.
In February 1928, my folks packed up a Model A coupe, placed me on the package shelf and drove the new Route 66 to California. We got snowed in in Santa Fe, N.M., and spent days waiting for the road to be cleared. It took us 10 days to make the trip.
My grandmother and many aunts and uncles soon joined us in California. The disaster certainly changed America for my family.
LENARD E. MCDONALD
Culver City
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