Johnnie Bratten:
Right, you can't think. You know everything is gone. You try to cope with it the best you can. It just doesn't want to leave you, but you just have to keep turning your mind away from it as much as you can until you get around where you can think to do anything. But the water stayed here, it kept rising for at least a solid week after that because it had leveled off after the storm. Then after coming back to get her, then the water continued to rise until it got up to the ceiling of the house for a week after that.
Charlie Thompson, interviewer:
Did it ruin everything?
Johnnie Bratten:
It ruined everything.
Interview with Charlie Thompson, Dec 8, 1999. Southern Oral History Project, UNC.