Surviving storms by seeking shelter in resilient oak trees
Yancy Welch by Susan Testroet-Bergeron, 2012; 4700.2568
TEMPESTS: Storms in the Archives
Yancy Welch: My daddy rode a tree out, one of these big oak trees. I'll show you when we go outside. He rode in that tree with him, his two sisters and his mom and dad for Hurricane Audrey. But we're standing underneath this other big oak tree and he says, "You know, Bub, that storm comes through, that water's going to be that high." I'm going to show y'all where that's at. And I said, "Dad, look, don't tell me this." He said, "I'm telling you." Well, about two weeks later when we finally all got down here together and standing and my house is completely gone and, "I want to show you something." And he's really a smart aleck sometimes, you know, with me. And you can see where the debris right where he pointed at was packed into that branch like that. He said, "You know the water was that high." "Yeah, Daddy, I know, the water was that high." To be so peaceful and tranquil right now, it can be a dirty place. It can be a mean place, and in a flash, as fast as it get here, it's gone again, you know. I did it twice in my life, threw all my keys away. And then you got a tranquil place that you . . . And look at the monsters outside. That's giants. Nothing killed them. Man killed them. That's the only thing that will kill that oak tree. A man can kill it. Salt water don't kill them unless it stays on it. But the pecan trees we have, the native pecans, they all dead. The hackberry trees, you used to have them . . . Rita killed them, Ike washed them away. But all the old men are still standing out there.