The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 19, 1906, Page 5

By Harry C. Carr. towns ese two under- r into e modern engineers a little too mu - es Imperial Valley irri- stem the old Colorado eagerly ds and rushed back to ken for centuries a g Southern Pa- fic tracks ou basin and has 4 the transcontinental line inch 1p to the base of the hills. A miles long anll twenty es wide, now spreads over the desert. unequal fight of of th the bou aseld ¢ e fif e towns against this de- ese two 1 ring monster. They fell in at two different bu months apart. beg th trickling streams of flood water, whi grew and grew hor- umped the banks of y. The water J e irrigating ditches down below the . n line and rushed into the twin was such a scene as must have Ke ace in the olden days when one é¢ Thobe king unsociable dragons orlee < were quaint little frontier e type that-is fast disap- In the American twin there is very long trickles such a town t—not whole wo sides of it ¢ one end was the funny little some Cocopah Indian kicked a of which courteously in the prisoner P te had to ¢ b the door by the hand- mi of the town was a typi- ca er saloon with a billiard table rt flo and a bar going full a the far end of the room. here was the frontier livery stable, where the horses were perfectly gentle abig & e. only they cautioned you not o let them get their heads down or they 11d buck and not to pull their THROVGE 1 pitch over er frontier hotel, where guests and mosquitoes slept to- er on the front porch.’ It was run v as fast as a run—by a from ‘the Adirondack man ains. the other side was, the solemn- can Justices of the Peace. s of the Peace—lots ts of peace. Es to be either a e of the Peace or looking Mex lots of J ery one solemn- a sol- On stoms officer. the sold stale beer and figurettes; on the Ameri- ey sold stale beer and fearful towns the flood tore f of each town. a joyous wrough the railroad yards and in the middle of a river seven miles broad w whoop The severe sign of the Southern Pa- sting gentlemen not Company requ to spit on the floor gazed down upon a pleasant stream that murmured a yard deep ough the “gents’ waiting- roo ut in the middle of the big, rushing Mississipp ke river a sign poked up above the surface; it sald: “Look Out for the Cars.” But the cars half way up to the windows in the flood did not look dangerous. The stockyard chutes had the comical appearance of anotheér kind of chutes, poking out of nowhere down into the water. ' On the Mexican side the flood caught a \"Hase of Cocopah Indians and sent them scurrying for the distant cliffs on the wrong side of a seven-mile river from the saloons. Having no enthusiasm for falling into the river, the Americans rushed out with teams and scrapers and built a big levee between the flood and the town; and the Mexicans came to and did like- wise. Those were exciting scenes. ‘Saloons turned out their barkeeps and their boosters, faro and poker tables thelr dealers, the old hotel-keeper, the village postmaster, the newspaper edi- tor and the town constable worked desperately side by side building the dike. Even girls came out in short skirts and helped hold back the river. The river tore on to the ranches be- low and this town settled down to a most peculiar existence. In the middle of the white hot, blind- ing desert a new occupation sprang into existence — professional boatmen. Cow punchers from the surrounding ranches went boatriding with thelr lady loves. it got to be no uncommon sight to see men calking the seams of a flat boat on a hummock of the flat, blazing, old, sun-dried desert. A ferry was started. Freighting was ordinanily done by boat. The river tore on to Brawley, up the valiey, and on and on until 'it dumped itself into the Salton Sea. One of the pggnks it caused was a deadly draught caused by a flood! Actually ranches were utterly ruined this year by terrible, parching drought on account of the flootl. More taan one ranch was' eaten and destroyed by flood and drought attack- ing them together. & This anomaly was --used by the ve- raciousness of the flood. It cut the channels so deep that its new formed banks stood up gaunt precipices.. The river was so far below the surface of the ground that it was impossible to raise it into the irrigation ditches. From the level land of the desert the river could be seen, an ugly. raging, foiming torrent fifty or sixty feet be- low. Parched banks kept crumbling and falling into the flood so continuous- Iy that'it sounded like heavy cannon- ading. The underneath part of aranch would be crumbling away In the flood while the surface would be starving for want of water and the crops dying. The twin towns might never have fallen into the river had not the river taken on a new and strange caprice. It began the process to be known to fu- ture nightmares as “cutting back.” A great falls as wide as Niagara in places formed up the river. The precipitous edge of it began crumbling off and crumbling and crumbling, so the brink of the falls was made to creep steadily up the river at the rate of a mile or two a day. The twin towns simply lay there in the blistering summer sun and waited to fall over the brink when it got that far. Somebody said that it gets so hot in Calexico that the water is only wet on one side and the lizards have to run on stilts. Books of etiquette have no chapters on how to behave when you know you are doomed to fall into a river, and maybe over the brink of a precipice. However, Calexico did pretty well with- out one. The townspeople could go to thejr back doors and throw the kitchen slops over the levee without leaving the kitchen door. That shows how near the river ran. The levee rose as high as a man’s head, so that as you stood in vour back door it appeared like a nar- row slit of blue ribbon on a level with your eyes. Hcw they used to lle in their beds, starting at every soft rustle of the wind, the townspeople will tell you. But they got to take it as a matter of course. The man who owned the only sure enough plano In the valley calmly screwed it to the floor and calculated that if the house floated off down the stream it must land somewhere, and ho thought the plano would float with the o i Another man cautlously stored his chickens in the garret every evening. The balcony of the upstairs porch was the commonest place of sleeping in that town: It got to have a certain zest to take a last look at the river before you went to bed and casually wonder in what portion of the landscape you would wake up. They fixed the mules so they could break loose and swim if it should strike them during the night. The river got them first in the sub- urbs, It cut a great, deep channel through one of the ranches. The little ranch house shack was left clinging forlornly on the very edge of a great, shaggy cliff. Board by board dropped down into the river. The last occupant of it was a big rattlesnake. One day two or three boards dropped together with a clatter into the flood far below, and he dropped with them. Contrary to the general idea, rattlesnakes can swim, . % TR T POIT I D s O CALEXICO-DENERAT -~ and swim well. This one managed to crawl upon one of the boards and was swept away downstream, rattling fu- riously. Foot by foot the glant watertall srept nearer Calexico. Vhen it came at last it was horrfble. I: turned with vicious cruelty first on the pitiful little frontier graveyard. Al! those who lay there in the graves were so0 far away from their people. There were little babies who had died in the heat, and whose young mothers had gone broken-hearted back ‘to clv- ilization, leaving them there in the ground. There were friendless strang- ers who had crawled inte the desert with a cough—too late. The river found them all. The watchers from agross the river could see the heartless flood eat down the level ground, leaving steep cliffs. Ends of black, worn boxes would be seen protruding out of the face of the cliffs. By and by the boxes would teeter far out as more and more dirt washed away. At last, with a splash, the box would go down and be whirled away in the flood. Languid young men in khak! sitting on the porches of the California De- velopment Company suddenly got busy. The big adobe bungalow, which was cne of the sights of the desert, was torn down brick by brick and carried away. The town had begun to fall into the river. Parts of the solemnly official Mex- icala dropped off and shot down the river, mingling with bits of drifting Calexica. Wher Mexicala began going bobbing by in the stream the merchants o! Calexico began- to make tracks, Calmly, as everything gocs on the frontier, men went staggering out of the *‘general store” loaded down with huge armloads of “biled shirts” of won- drous design. Most alarming-looking pink and green milllnery was carried out with awe and at arms’ length, bun- dles of khaki clothes, pith helmets, new canteens, infant bottles, patent safety pins, whisky, glass and stick pins went in huge loads out onto the desert, where the sand rose a little higher. 1t was “very like a San Francisco 1efugee camp. Surrounded by their bales they made bonfires and merrily cooked their bacon. Indians and sonie of the Mexicans began to look sus- piciously dressed up. Dirty-faced Joses would sail by, gorgeous in heavy suits of underclothing and cheap black broadcloth suits, running with sweat 00 I but very haughty. Some unwary soul brought some heavy ribbed brown Aleska underclothes -into this broiling spot a year or so ago, and the Indians dream of it and save their money to get it. What if ‘one.melts away in a river of grease just so one looks grand! Meanwhile thé river tore in through the town and chewed up the levees the “company” had built around its costly bungalow. It went gurgling through the stores and through the back rooms of the saloon, but it found no human lives to destroy. Calexico was blithely perspiring out on the desert. It gurgled in at the front door and WHEN CALEXICC mmw@w THAT 1T WOULD HAVE TO SWLA ° gurgled out the back. It ran the colors of the carpets into strange new designs. It made dough of the family flour bar- rels.. It eddied and swirled around the cnly grand piano in town. Some of the smaller bulldings it picked up and banged around tewn, this dissipated old river. After a while some of the engineers managed to row out against the tide, which went like a millrace. They rlanted something and hastily rowed back. There came a dull roar and the water splashed up in tall fountain. The river eddied and whirled and guttered and gurgled and the: ran THE/S ONZY 2Bl CONVEIANCE WAS 4 - - TRAVELING CIGE S WUNG TOA CiELEr pos “ee meekly out of the town agaln, leavin; the town high and dry, and continu to run where it belonged, beyond the rallroad statfon. It had been turned by dynamite. The town that fell into the river had Zallen out again. | Some of the houses now rested on their roofs, “while others had settled snugly Into the streets. What if somg of the houses’ would have to be haul miles to gét them back into thel proper. neighborhood? It is all a mat, ter of time, and down along the Mex. 1 border everybody has all the tims there is