When Egnas Limoges and his brother Bill left their family’s farmhouse on the River Road in North Troy that day, it was raining harder than either boy had ever seen it rain before.
The boys were headed back to the boarding house in the village where Egnas lived. Little did the brothers know, the storm that struck on November 3 and 4 was the beginning of one of the worst (if not the worst) natural disasters to strike Vermont - the Great Flood of 1927.
The flood wreaked havoc on much of the state causing an estimated $30-million in damage. Flood waters destroyed homes, bridges and everything else in the way. The flood killed about 85 people and left about 9,000 people homeless.
Seventy-two years later, Egnas Limoges - who is now 95 years old and lives in Newport - has vivid memories of that night and the days following. With the close of the century days away, Mr. Limoges shared these memories and many others during a recent series of interviews.
As the two drove down the dirt road in a Model T Ford, Mr. Limoges said he and his brother realized the Missisquoi River, which runs alongside the River Road, was higher than they’d ever seen it. It wasn't rare for the river to overflow its banks onto the road, but inches of water soon turned to feet. The car sputtered to a stop when the Limoges brothers tried to drive it through three feet of water.
After having a neighbor use his horse to pull out the flooded car, the two brothers walked back to the boarding house to wait out the storm. They knew it was impossible to get back to their parents’ house.
"I was really worried for them," Mr. Limoges said. "I didn't get hardly any sleep." The next day, he said, when he went to check on his family he was amazed to find just how high the water in the valley along the River Road was.
"The water was to the tops of the telephone poles," Mr. Limoges said. After getting a boat and getting into sight of his family's house, "I could see my folks were getting on a boat from the roof of the porch."
The rescuer had managed to battle strong currents to make his way to the family's house - but not before the house had drifted about 250 feet downstream with the family on it. They also lost all their 30 or so cows when they drowned in the barn. "When the water started coming in the house he rang a bell and shot a revolver to get somebody's attention," Mr. Limoges said, referring to his father. He also tried to convince the cows to leave the barn that was already filling with water. "My father said, ‘You should have heard those cows bellow.’ He'd take four or five cows out the door, then when he got three or four more they'd come back in." The family took refuge on the second floor of the house when the first floor filled with water. As the water climbed the stairs, Mr. Limoges said his father placed a statue of St. Anne, the Virgin Mary's mother, on the next to the last step and prayed that the water wouldn't pass the statue. It didn't - the water stopped at the statue's feet. "My father was crying when he saw me," Mr. Limoges said. "He thought he'd never see me again."
"The next day the water was all gone," he said. That is when the real work began. Although the house had been swept off its foundation and filled with four feet of sand and even a log, it was still in good shape. The American Red Cross gave the family $900 to help them rebuild their lives, Mr. Limoges said. It wasn't enough to completely do the job, but it sure helped out.
The house was moved to a higher spot on the family's property in preparation for such a flood that might someday strike again - a flood that has yet to come. The house was put on rollers, and a horse pulled it to the new spot. The family also dug into the cellar hole and managed to salvage their winter's supply of potatoes and canned vegetables. The flood had a terrible effect on his father, Mr. Limoges said. He had a hard time even talking about it. Optimistically, Mr. Limoges said, "it's what the good Lord wanted, it's what He got."
Mr. Limoges was born in St. Marcel, Quebec, on October 10, 1904, to Lewis and Virginia Limoges and moved to North Troy in May, 1918, while World War I was raging in Europe.
"I was 13 years old when we moved to North Troy," Mr. Limoges said. The family settled on a farm on the River Road where they started farming with 21 cows. But that was only after trying to live in Massachusetts and then in New Hampshire.
His father wasn't afraid of work, Mr. Limoges said. He'd do anything legal to make money including farming, working in a factory, as a night watchman, fixing shoes, and even digging graves.
Like many other French-Canadian families that came to the area, he said, his family came to the states to try to escape the poor economic conditions that were gripping southern Quebec at the time. Mr. Limoges still has a thick French-Canadian accent. When the family arrived in North Troy, Mr. Limoges said they found many other French families who had moved to Vermont and surrounding communities to start a new life. Mr. Limoges quickly named off a list of French surnames of families that lived on the River Road and around other parts of North Troy, many of which are still common today such as Therrien, Dubois, Tetreault, and Boudreau.
He remembers walking or riding his bike to the village during the summer months as a teenager during the early 1920s to watch parades and to listen to war veterans speak. Some of those veterans were from World War I, which ended in 1918. Mr. Limoges said he can recall at least two old gentlemen in town who were most likely well in their 80s. Those two spoke about their battles during a war that divided the nation - the Civil War. That war ended in 1865.
Being a young man at the time, Mr. Limoges said, he didn't pay much attention to the two men or what they were saying. Now he wishes he had.
During his 95 years, Mr. Limoges said, he has seen many wonderful and terrible things. He has lived through World War I, World War II, the Korean war, the Vietnam War, and a host of other military conflicts. He also saw the hatred of some local people who attended local Ku Klux Klan rallies against minorities and burned crosses.
"I can remember coming out of midnight mass in North Troy and there was a cross burning," he said. He also remembers a national tragedy - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Mr. Limoges said he was working as a carpenter in Jay when he heard the news.
He has seen many inventions that have changed the world, including the television and radio. He remembers watching the tears in the eyes of television anchorman Walter Cronkite on July 20, 1969, as Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon when he stepped out of his Apollo 11 lunar landing module.
Mostly, people are the same today as they were years ago, Mr. Limoges said. There have always been those who don’t want to work or who will cheat to get a dollar, he said, but most people are not like that and never were.
On the other hand, he said, "young people" in their 60s and younger haven’t seen the hard times that people in their 70s, 80s and 90s have seen. They don't know what it was like trying to live through the Great Depression making 20 to 25 cents an hour.
"That was not enough to live." Many people couldn't find a job at all.
The younger folks don’t know what it’s like to live without electricity and running water, he added.
One thing that hasn’t changed much over the years are politicians, Mr. Limoges said. There have been some good ones and some bad ones. Although he considers himself a Democrat, he said, he votes for whoever has the best interest of Vermonters at hand - whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. "I voted years for George Aiken, and I vote for Jeffords and Sanders," Mr. Limoges said. Mr. Aiken was a Republican who was elected to the Vermont House in 1930. He later became governor, then served as a United States Senator for 36 years. Mr. Jeffords is a Republican U.S. Senator, and Bernie Sanders is an Independent U.S. Representative.
When asked who was the best president he has seen, Mr. Limoges said firmly, "We’ve got him right now."
He said President Franklin Roosevelt was a good president. He got the country out of the Depression, but he had World War II to contend with. "Clinton got elected into a Depression, and see what it is today," Mr. Limoges said. "Papers are full of advertisements to put people to work."
He said all the commotion about his affair with Monica Lewinsky doesn’t bother him, although he doesn’t approve of the president’s behavior. He quickly rambled off a list of presidents who were rumored to have mistresses. Nobody made a commotion about it, he said, and they were allowed to continue to do their jobs without having to be bothered with questions about their affairs.
"What Clinton done is going to hurt Gore, but I’m going to vote for him," he said. He also commended Governor Howard Dean. "If he runs again, I’ll vote for him again," Mr. Limoges said. "He’s a nice man."
Mr. Limoges shared what farm life was like for him. Today farmers have tractors and other machinery. Back then pretty much all they had were horses and their own two hands. There weren't any milking machines to milk the cows because there wasn't any electricity yet. Instead, the cows were milked by hand, often by the light of lanterns. Horses were used to help harrow the fields and cut and rake the hay. Pitch forks were used to toss the hay into the hay wagons. Trips to the Hood dairy in the village were common, Mr. Limoges said. They’d load the express wagon with big cans of milk and head to the village to dump the milk.
Farming was hard work, Mr. Limoges said, but it was work that he and his family loved.
One day in the fall of 1918, he said, he remembers going in the field with his father to bring the cows in when he heard the whistle in town blowing and the church bells ringing. "I said to my father, 'Why do they do that?' He said, 'Must be the war is over.'" His father was right.
People today are so lucky to have electricity, Mr. Limoges said. Electricity has made life so much easier. Even preserving food was a chore without electricity. Many families canned food and raised their own meat. The family usually butchered a couple of pigs in the fall for the winter's supply of meat. Once the pigs were killed they were cut into two pieces, frozen, then buried in oats in an outbuilding. The oats would keep the meat cold until it was all eaten up, Mr. Limoges explained.
"You could keep it until spring."
People also relied on the meat seller for their meat. Instead of buying the meat in the store, a fellow would go door to door each week with his horse drawn meat wagon selling meat. Some people kept the meat in iceboxes, but Mr. Limoges said he remembers while living in Quebec his family would cook the meat that they weren't going to be eating within a couple of days then lower it into the well in a bucket. The water was cold enough to preserve it for a week or two.
The Limoges children went to a one-room schoolhouse that used to be on the River Road. There were no buses back then, Mr. Limoges said. Children who lived within a mile and a half of the school had to walk. The school hired somebody to bring children who lived further than that from school, such as the seven Limoges children, to school on a horse-drawn buggy or a wagon. Then at the end of the school day the children were driven home.
Mr. Limoges said his dad did the job for a while. At $12 a day, he was paid pretty good.
Young people who went on to high school in the village had to find their own way there, Mr. Limoges said. "A lot of people who went to high school took a horse and put them in a barn near the school."
Personal tragedy struck in the fall of 1918 when Mr. Limoges’ mother died shortly after giving birth. It was during an influenza outbreak that killed many Vermonters. Mr. Limoges said he can still clearly picture the last time he talked to her, minutes before her death.
"When I went in the next time, she was dead." His father remarried a good woman, Mr. Limoges said, but that didn't take away the pain of losing his mother. After his mother's death, Mr. Limoges said he seldom went to school before his father remarried. It was Egnas' job to do the housework.
Life wasn't all hard work and tough times, Mr. Limoges said. French people liked to dance and have a good time. They didn’t need a hall. He remembers going to many kitchen junkets at people’s houses. During these kitchen junkets all the furniture from a room or two was moved into another room. A fiddler played and everybody would square dance for hours.
Basketball was also a popular sport, Mr. Limoges said. Most every high school in the county had a basketball team, and they'd all compete against each other to be the number one team. Mr. Limoges said he recalls riding a horse about an hour to Newport Center just to watch a basketball game, then after the game he had an hour’s ride back to North Troy.
Before cars were popular in this area, Mr. Limoges said people relied on train travel to get where they wanted to go. They could hop on the train and ride to Newport Center or Newport or even such faraway places as Boston or Montreal. During the early part of the century they didn't even open the road between Newport and North Troy because the long stretch of road was too hard to keep passable, so people relied on the trains.
"The trains were packed full in those days," Mr. Limoges said. "You could go anywhere by train." He said he and his family traveled a lot by train, and many tourists visited the area on train. But as cars became more common, fewer trains passed through. Mr. Limoges speculated that some day trains are going to make a comeback; it's just a matter of time.
Mr. Limoges said he saw his first car when he was living with his family in New Hampshire before the family moved to North Troy. He bought his own car in 1926 when he was probably 22 years old. He bought the brand new 1926 Ford touring car over the mountain in Richford for $426. Mr. Limoges said cars didn't have electric starters at the time, so car owners had to turn a crank on the front of the cars to start the engine. He said his father started thinking about buying one of his own after seeing Egnas’ car.
"I showed him how to run one, so he got one," Mr. Limoges said. Like his son, he bought a 1926 Ford touring car.
Mr. Limoges married his wife, Rachel Martel, in 1928. The couple decided to buy a new, more modern car - a 1928 Roadster that had an electric starter. That meant he no longer had to turn a crank to start the car. He paid $478 for the car. Mr. Limoges said the last car he ever bought was in 1979 when he bought a new Chevrolet for a little over $6,000. He kept that car for 20 years and only put on about 40,000 miles.
In 13 years, Mr. Limoges said he and his wife produced 11 children.
"The Catholic Church, they say, when God made the people he said, 'Go an multiply you," Mr. Limoges said. Being good Catholics, they set out and followed God's order. Mr. Limoges pointed with pride at the many family pictures that hang from one of the walls of his room at the Newport Health Care & Rehabilitation Center where he lives today.
He said his family has grown dramatically over the years. In addition to the couple’s 11 children, the family now includes 41 grandchildren, 62 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
In 1930, the year following the 1929 Stock Market crash that sent the United States into the Great Depression, Mr. Limoges and his wife bought a farm on Route 105 in Newport Center that included a house, a barn, 120 acres, and 20 cows - all for $8,500. Times were tough for many families during the Depression, Mr. Limoges said, and it was no different for his family. Milk prices dropped dramatically forcing some farmers out of business. Mr. Limoges worked other jobs such as at a veneer mill in North Troy to make extra money while his wife worked the farm.
Some people turned to running booze across the border during Prohibition to make extra money to help make ends meet, Mr. Limoges said. Prohibition against the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol was in effect from 1920 to 1933 - the law essentially banned alcohol in this country.
Rum running was dangerous business, Mr. Limoges said. During the 1920s before he was married, he said, he and friends would hop on their horses and go to Highwater, Quebec, have a quart of beer for 25 cents then go home. He said he enjoyed a couple of beers now and then but, "I never never got to where I didn't know nothing." Because of his faith and because he was too "chicken" he never brought booze back into the country.
"I had a good name and I didn't want to lose it." He did once inadvertently allow a rumrunner to hide his fully loaded car in his barn. For that, Mr. Limoges said he earned $5.
"Five dollars was a lot of money back then," Mr. Limoges said.
Prohibition was a bad idea, he said. People came from all over the place to drink. When they came they were sober, but on their return trip too many of them were drunk which meant there were a lot of car accidents. Besides that, people who wanted to drink could get alcohol if they really wanted it.
Mr. Limoges said it would have been difficult to have survived the Depression without his wife. "My wife was a very good farmer. When we bought the farm we didn't have a milking machine and she'd milked ten or 12 cows night and morning."
Mrs. Limoges died in 1998 at 90 years old.
"I miss her, oh I miss her."
The farm finally got electricity sometime between 1940 and 1942, and at about the same time the Limoges bought milking machines.
During a trip to his aunt and uncle's house in Massachusetts probably in the late 1940s he saw something he found amazing - a television. It had a tiny little screen, Mr. Limoges said, as he used his hands to show a screen that was apparently a foot by a foot. To change stations, he said, his aunt or uncle "had to climb on the house every time to turn the antenna."
So impressed with the television, he bought his family one sometime between 1950 and 1952. Amazingly, Mr. Limoges said to this day he has only ever owned three televisions in his life.
In 1963, when Mr. Limoges was 58 years old, and the couple's last child had moved away, the couple decided it was time to give up farming. They sold the farm and a few additional acres for about $33,500 and moved to Newport where he has lived ever since. The farm sold 16 or 17 years later when the real estate market was high for about $245,000.
After retiring from farming, Mr. Limoges worked in several miscellaneous jobs. He retired as a groundskeeper at the Newport Country Club after 15 years of work. He proudly pointed out that during the years he worked at the golf course he helped expand it from a nine-hole golf course to an 18-hole course.
Looking back on his life, Mr. Limoges said he never dreamed of living to 95 years old although his father lived to be 89 years old.
"I remember my father told me one time... ‘You are never going to live very long.'"
"I said, ‘Why?’"
"Because you eat too much," Mr. Limoges’ father said. Mr. Limoges said come to think about it, he always did have a healthy appetite.
The secret to living a long healthy life is a positive attitude, staying busy, continuing to learn, and a strong faith in God, Mr. Limoges said.
With the next millennium nearing, Mr. Limoges said he’s going to focus his energy on living to a hundred and surfing the Internet - a hobby he only recently learned.