TAKING STOCK OF LES MISSOURI MISERABLES

Visiting the small Missouri towns and urban neighborhoods where flood waters threatened homes, businesses and thousands of acres of farmland, I felt like Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" as he joined the embattled students behind their barricades.

Touring communities from Portage des Sioux to Cape Girardeau, I witnessed sorrow, hope, desperation, work, resignation and even~, a~s might be expected from those who had run the gamut of emotions over days and weeks of thinking of nothing else, humor.

Surprisingly, there was almost no sign of anger, as I made my way from Portage des Sioux to St. Charles to Chesterfield to the downtown St. Louis riverfront to the River Des Peres neighborhood to Crystal City to Ste. Genevieve and, finally, to Cape Girardeau. What was clearly in abundance was a wave of Missourians, with some out-of-state volunteers thrown in for good measure, who were doing all they humanly could to stem a tide of water that no one doubted was far greater than the combined physical strength of the gathered men, woman and children.

Yet like Victor Hugo's students who were fighting a far-greater force, the volunteers battling the Great Flood of '93 were imbued with a faith in their cause that seemed to even out or, hopefully, overcome their disadvantage.

Talking to scores of men, women and children, I found a strength that defied logic, a hope that defied reason and a faith that defied the force of a river that seemed bent on destroying everything in its waiting, trembling path.

In Portage des Sioux, St. Charles and Ste. Genevieve, scenes behind the levees were reminiscent of war, with soldiers in battle fatigues, giant camouflaged trucks carrying load after load of gravel to mile after mile of levees, with precious property protected by walls of sandbags that could have been used to absorb enemy fire but, instead, were piled high to hold back raging water.

Nothing was more important than the task at hand, even if only a few miles from this mass confusion, other families were holding a backyard barbecue.

Without detracting one bit from all the others, the battle to save and preserve Ste. Genevieve was perhaps the most heroic of all. This community, which seems to encompass all of the nation's earliest history west of the Mississippi River, is important to the understanding of America for generations yet unborn, and its destruction would be both devastating and unthinkable.

Here, the earliest citizens of the West began to plant their roots and raise their families. Without this community, we could never understand how our civilization came into being nor realize why it existed at all.

Like the rebelling students in the play, "Les Miserables," people were everywhere in Ste. Genevieve, although virtually all the businesses were closed and the town's commerce seemed not to exist.

National Guardsmen, Corps of Engineers officials, local police and firemen, volunteer truck drivers, and whole families down to wee, small children worked hard at their tasks, many working day after day in 12-hour shifts.

Despite the commercial quiet, there was plenty of action around the local Catholic Church, where hundreds worked almost around the clock, filling more and more handbags, while scores of heavy trucks moved up and down U.S. 61 to bring tons of gravel to buttress existing levees that never seemed quite tall enough.

Just blocks from this activity, I could walk along levees that had been judged sufficient for the day and see no one or walk down streets once filled with tourists and see only a handful of inhabitants, some still moving out of their Main Street homes and others just standing on the sandbags that promised them safety when, and if, it all came about.

Most of the shops that once enticed tourists with everything from postcards to paintings by local artists had been emptied of their wares, and one departing shopkeeper had left a crudely lettered sign on the door for the uninvited guest. It read: "Go South Ole Man. You Have Made Your Point."

True to tradition, the town's Old Brick Tavern, built in 1785, remained open, although customers were few. Most were up the street, filling sandbags. Others were down the road, topping an emergency levee that cut across U.S. Highway 61; like others in the river's path, it would soon give way, flooding the southern section of this lovely old town.

A resident tearfully recounted her family's loss, confessing she had reached the age of 81 and for the first time in her life, felt no hope. "I feel nothing at all." I wish I could have recalled for her Victor Hugo's final words in "Les Miserables":

Will the future ever arrive? The ideal is terrifying to behold, threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it; nevertheless no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.