The Bluestone Review 2025

The Bluestone Review

The Flood of 2024, Aftermath of Hurricane Helene Gene Dunford

Today is Friday, September 27th, 2024. It has rained for two days, hard, New River has the highest water that I have ever seen. I have seen campers, trailers, and about anything you can name coming down. Larry Dunford has pulled his camper trailer up to his house in Ivanhoe. Going up River Road, the water is about 10 feet high, The water is stopping anything from moving up to where the people live. Stopping them from going to their houses. I am past 83 years old and have been here all my life on the river. I have never seen anything like this. Everything in Jubilee Park has been washed away. Over at the crossroads and Watts’ Bottom, the water from Cripple Creek is to the top of the bridge. The water is over the corn at Watts’ Bottom. People would have to see this flood to believe what it has damaged. This is the worst flood since August 16th, 1940. That’s the year my mom and dad lost their home to that flood.

Buzzard Spit Devonne Brown

If I look back far enough I can see where all the nooks and crannies of our idiosyncrasies began. I start at the top of Buzzard Spit, where the cemetery sits and the graves are laid out like the family tree. That’s where the fear, loathing, and love of my world began. That cemetery holds those secrets. Silas, from Scotland, got off of the boat at Ellis Island, made his way to West Virginia and rode a white horse deep into the hollers of Clay county. He rescued an Indian princess from the Trail of Tears to bear his children. On county records, she is nameless to this day, but her ten children all bear names that were known in the hills. Did he hide her from the authorities or did she not count as a human? I believe the latter. Her name is forgotten, but she rests, unmarked, beside him in Buzzard Spit cemetery. If I look back far enough, I also feel the grief of the grandmother whose lumberjack husband fell from the tree he topped and died that very day. She

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