Town of Panther
left feeling swept away
Some parts of town
hardest hit by flood
still hard to reach

Vada Mossavat <vmossavat@dailymail.com>
Daily Mail staff

Monday May 06, 2002; 11:00 AM

PANTHER -- The water in the creek and river were peaceful, as though Mother Nature forgot what she did to Walter Cline's garden, Barbara Bailey's porch, the school in town and a score of houses and trailers in this McDowell County town.

Panther was inaccessible by road for several days. Some parts of the town, one of the hardest hit by Thursday's flood, can still be accessed only by four- wheeler.

Trees and bushes along the Tug River and Panther Creek were laid flat, muddied and slicked back like pomaded hair. The white plastic bags and colored debris decorated the branches like hair ribbons.

The road is washed out or buckled in many places. The school has a foot of mud in it.

You can't even tell where 15 or 20 trailers once stood because they have floated away and their foundations have been covered with mud, said Panther Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Jonathan Hunt.

Until Thursday's flood, Walter Cline's garden had six kinds of corn and he was going to plant two more and maybe some half-runner beans. Cline has lived in Panther and had his garden for 18 years. Until Thursday's flood it was the "most beautiful garden in Southern West Virginia," he said.

He pointed to a place covered in sand where his corn is hidden under inches of Tug River silt. He pointed to his mulberry bush that he called his shade tree, flattened by the water.

He pointed to the few of his onions still visible.

"Someone said it could be worse," he said. "I hope not."

What will he do when it is time to assess the damage?

"I didn't have much, but I lost a lot. I don't know how to put a price on it. It was the most beautiful-est garden I had," he said.

He tries to be philosophical about it.

"It's hard to get out of this world without getting some things not the way you would like it," he said. "It's a sad loss. The Lord's in control. He knows what he's doing."

Cline said he's not going to eat the few onions he has left, he's going to replant them. Since it's only May, he said he's going to plant some corn when the land dries and he clears what used to be his garden.

"I might get a batch of corn yet," he said.

Barbara Bailey isn't considering replanting -- or anything else -- yet.

Bailey watched her double-wide trailer move from the spot where she had lived for 25 years down the creek.

"It's too soon to think of what we're going to do," she said. Right now she is busy getting what she can salvage from her trailer that was swept 30 yards down Panther Creek where it hit another trailer, she said. Her neighbor's trailer washed all the way down the creek.

Debris littered her lot. She said it wasn't hers, it was from the people farther up.

Reminders of loss are everywhere. A shoe, a boot, a paintbrush, a welder's mask, a broken videotape, a leopard skin bathmat.

Pastor Hunt said he reminded a member of his congregation on Thursday, before the rains began, of the Bible verse in Matthew that says it rains on the just and the unjust alike.