The Big River Asks Hard Questions
On Friday, June 13 the board of aldermen of the City of Clarksville, Missouri, sat down to sign off the last of the accounts from the most pressing business of 2013.
They had drained savings, tapped hollow logs, and saved the city's residents from the Mississippi River flood of 2013.
Less than three weeks later, the relic of a long and bitterly cold winter in the Upper Midwest, followed by an unending chain of spring storms, began rolling down the big river.
Clarksville was founded in 1817, as a trading and transport hub, 70 miles north of St Louis. Unlike the majority of towns and cities fronting the river, walled off from it by massive berms and levees, Clarksville has embraced its proximity, but is utterly defenceless whenever the Mississippi decides to break its banks.
The result is a charming historical anachronism. Clarksville is now home to artists, artisans and antique dealers. Its downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Place.
Population: 240.
"Quirky", said the mayor, fondly, of the city and its occupants.
"It's not a me, me, me town," resident and former café owner Caron Quirk said of Clarksville. "It's an us, us, us town."
As the floodwaters rolled downstream, Jo Anne Smiley, the 74 year-old, part-time, unpaid mayor, had to tell her constituents, who were also her friends and neighbors, that the city could not save them.
Clarksville was facing its fifth flood in nine years. Fortifying it with walls of sandbags cost $400-750,000 each time, depending on the height of the flood. The city's annual budget is $400,000.
"We had to say to people, we didn't have the money to build these walls here," Smiley said. "We had to say, 'It's up to the individual.'
"It's unbelievably difficult. I don't think I could stand here and do nothing."
The alternative would send the city into bankruptcy. Legally and morally, White said, the aldermen could not vote to do that.
Politics is very local in a community of 240. Her city's pain was her own.
"You feel it right to the heart," White said. "The bullet goes right to the heart."
The Mississippi River was at 35.2 feet at Clarksville, as White spoke. Flood level is 25 feet.
This time, outside agencies were doing their best to help the city repel the water. Volunteers came from AmeriCorps of St Louis. Sand was provided by the State Emergency Management Agency, and was transported free of charge by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad.
Now Clarksville waits for the river to do its worst, which could be days, or weeks, depending on the volume of water upstream. After that, there is the cleanup. "Hideous," Smiley said.
For now, the city is isolated. Highway 79, the only route in and out of town, is cut by floodwaters.
The city has no grocery store or supermarket. The eight-mile run to the store now takes 90 minutes, Smiley said.
In her previous life, Smiley earned degrees in Music Education and Sacred Music, taught music in public schools in St Louis, played it in theatres, judged and discussed it at festivals and conventions.
She came to politics and leadership accidentally, arriving in Clarksville in 2001 with her husband Wayne as one half of a newly-retired couple, initially on weekends, then as full-time residents.
They came to love the city and its people, and soon, Smiley said, she heard a call to do more, and be a part of the community.
Teaching helped her with the practicalities of dealing with people, and her parents, farmers, instilled a quality of a particular type of leadership.
"Stick-to-it-iveness was part of their everyday life," Smiley said. "They never met a stranger. They took care of themselves and took care of people around them, as well.
"You grow up on a farm and you're always taught you did everything you could, every single day, the best you could, and say thank you at the end."
The days, every single one of them, will be trying for the foreseeable future as the Mississippi surrounds and occupies Clarksville like a gatecrasher that has made itself a guest.
The Mayor of Clarksville looks into the future and hopes the prospect of a 200th anniversary celebration of the city will keep its residents' spirits unbowed, for now.
Music and her marriage help her through these times, the Mayor said. When her husband plays the pipe organ, it makes her day.
"Any time he sits down, he's creative, and it's all just very inspiring."
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Original reporting, with research from articles by the AP, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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