SURVIVORS: FLOOD VICTIMS ENDURE WRATH OF MISSISSIPPI RIVER

MILLER CITY, Ill. -- There are grim reminders of what happened to the fruits of Greg Patton's labor inside the Patton Hunting Club.

There is the framed picture of his sprawling home and spacious swimming pool, once adjacent to the 1,000-acre farm. Next to the picture is a box of snapshots of the same home being swallowed by the Flood of 1993.

There is still talk of what remains of the 37 goose-hunting pits. Now hunters flock to just 12 pits during the season.

The Mississippi River flood took everything except Patton's memory of what it meant to work the earth and the heritage that accompanied such a privilege.

"It's hard to sit in a boat and watch it vanish in front of your very eyes," Patton said. "You live in fear of a flood every day of your life, but you never think it will wipe you out like that."

Patton has little more than 200 acres left of a farm handed down by his father in 1976. His grandfather owned and worked the farm before turning it over to his son.

The machine shop, which contained equipment estimated to be worth in excess of $100,000, is also gone.

"I've got to rent the 200 acres out to get what's left out of the land," Patton said. "The flood left so much sand on most of the land that I don't think some of it will ever be good enough to grow crops."

Patton initially was devastated by the loss. "I grew up with farming. It's all I know, all I ever thought I would do. Now I have to find something different to do," said Patton, a third-generation farmer.

Perhaps some would expect Patton to move away from the area that literally washed away his livelihood. But Patton and Miller City residents like Buddy Warren don't even think about doing such a thing.

"You don't run from something like this," said Patton, 41. "This is still my home. What happened during the flood was an act of God. God dealt us a hand and now we have to play it out."

He now lives in a house of just 640 square feet. "When you consider that we had a home that was almost 4,000 square feet, it's quite an adjustment to make," he said. "But I can't think about what used to be; I've got to get out and find a job to get on with my life."

He hopes to land a government job of some kind. "I might try to get a job at the super-maximum prison in Tamms, or maybe something with the highway department," he said.

Buddy Warren, who worked on the Patton farm, was also hit hard by last year's flood.

"I lost 1,200 pairs of boots in the storage building. I lost a butcher shop, and had to restore a lot of my house," Warren said. "But nobody took the hit that Greg took," Warren said. "He lost most of his farm, his house, a lot of his hunting pits and his machine shop. Nobody around here got knocked down like that."

What made matters worse is a decision by Miller City in 1986 to get out of the flood-insurance program. "My house was worth about $100,000, the swimming pool about $40,000, and the equipment alone in the machine shop was valued at about $100,000," Patton said. "I didn't get a dime of insurance money for any of it. The only thing I'm getting right now is some assistance from (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) toward the rent on the home I'm in right now."

The Pattons, who now reside at nearby Horseshoe Lake, are looking for a larger house. "I want to remain here," Patton said. "Me and my wife are from here, and my mother-in-law only lives eight miles from here. You grow up with this and you want to keep a piece of it."

Warren said he wouldn't move away from Miller City if someone gave him a home somewhere else. "My whole life is invested in this area," he said. "If I moved up to higher ground, I'd probably get hit by a tornado or something."

Like Patton, Warren has never lost his faith in the people who inhabit his town. "The people are the reason you can't leave," Warren said. "Even total strangers reached out and touched this town after the flood."

Warren received donations from people as far away as California. "Someone told me there was a check for $600 to help me recover from the flood," Warren said. "I told them it was probably for the church. When I found out it was for me, I couldn't believe it."

A group from California even sent toys for over 150 children. "They had them wrapped and everything," Warren said. "Without the Red Cross and churches all over the country, we probably would never even have had a Christmas last year."

Warren said the flood taught him a tough lesson. "I'm a Christian and believe in certain things," Warren said. "But if this thing taught me anything it was that you can't trust anything to stay the way it is forever. There were people who thought they had it made, and then all of a sudden they're looking for some place to stay."

A levee under construction is expected to be finished Jan. 15. It should make it safer to live in Miller City, but no one is calling it completely safe.

"The Flood of 1993 did some things that make this town changed forever," Patton said. "Some parts will recover and others won't, but the people stay the same. That's really what keeps us all here."