When I first came to Humboldt County in January of 1947, I was told that I was lucky to have missed the 21st of December. Folklore in the area says that something awful usually happens on that date. Since I didn’t have any other choice of location if I was going to live with my husband, a native of the area, I decided to pay no attention to the silly rumor.

Until 1954 it was a rumor, and then we had a 7.5 on the Richter scale earth quake on December 21st. Then the next year on that fateful date we had a flood. We thought it was a big one just because we did not know what was in store for us December 21, 1964.

It had rained for days in December and all of a sudden it cleared around the 16th or so. In Eureka we basked in the cold sunlight; after all, it was better than rain, we thought. And then it hit. It seems that the back country snow suddenly started melting when a warm weather rain front moved in. The amount of water which started flowing in the Eel, the Klamath and the Smith was unbelievable. We became completely isolated in the Humboldt Bay area. To the south on 101 we had roads but no bridges. To the east on 299 to Weaverville we had bridges and no road. Highway 101 north abruptly stopped at Klamath where the bridge had gone out. We stayed in this condition for over six weeks.

Our grocery stores were strikingly bare and were supplied by air lift, the largest single civilian population to be taken care of thus since the Berlin air lift. The Salvation Army sent giant relief planes full of blankets, etc., and the Safeway stores sent their planes in, loaded with groceries. I still recall the almost-empty shelves in some places, and in others, piles of very fine fresh fruits.

The county was under martial law, with the airport at McKinleyville being under the control of an Army colonel, the only governing authority who mattered in our lives. He definitely outranked God, even if we were sending up fervent prayers for the unceasing water rising in our rivers. The rivers just kept rising. You can’t imagine so much water. We lived by the radio because our lives were regulated by what we heard over the air waves. The telephone, which we weren’t supposed to use, was commandeered for official business. But most of us phoned our relatives outside the area as soon as we could get a line, which was not easy to procure. A lot of phone calls went out at strange hours and were gratefully received by anxious relatives far from Humboldt.

The story I want to tell is about the Humboldt State University student who was out of the county, home for Christmas, when the flood struck and his amazing plan for moving without ever returning to the area.

While home for Christmas, he procured a job which had to be taken immediately. There he was, with a job; however, his belongings were in his student quarters in Humboldt. He had no way to get his possessions as there was no access to the county. Furthermore, there seemed no promise in the future for him to get here to regain his student properties, like books and clothes. There was no auto transport into or out of the county.

By telephone he and his roommate came up with a unique scheme which was predicated upon the immense goodwill toward our fellow humans which existed in all of us at the time. It was simplicity itself. Anyone leaving the county by air merely phoned the number posed on the numerous Humboldt State bulletin boards and volunteered to take one package out as part of one’s luggage. The package was then delivered to your home shortly before departure time, and you were given a quarter. Airport lockers were only 25 cents for 48 hours at the time. You also received an envelope stamped and addressed to the young man who was moving. You were was instructed to deposit the package in the locker, put in the quarter, remove the key, and put the key into the envelope which you then mailed.

I don’t know how many of us it took to get him moved, but move him we did.

Then there was the Oregon Tech basketball team who had flown down to Arcata to play Humboldt. They played their game all right, but then the flood came and they couldn’t get home. We had an almost-empty fraternity house because its occupants had gone home for Christmas. The Oregon basketball team moved into the fraternity house, and they even arranged to use the cars which some of the fraternity men had left when they flew out. No, they were not squatters; all was arranged by telephone.

How did Humboldt get all the students back? Our President, Siemens, and our Dean of Students, Karshner, came up with a brilliant scheme. Remember the county was absolutely isolated by road when it came time for school to start in January. They wrote to each student and advised him or her to fly to Redding, where a special airlift arranged for transport to Humboldt, complete with college buses in readiness to transport students from our airport to the campus. Nature intervened with a couple of very mean tricks.

The San Francisco airport, the rendezvous for Arcata-McKinleyville, was fogged in for 24 hours or so. Then when they assembled at Redding, a snowstorm came which caused the shuttle to Arcata-McKinleyville to be put off for one night. The President and Dean got the American Red Cross in Redding to take over, and somehow nearly 1,000 students were put up over night in Redding.

Yes, they did get back to campus.

Most of us cringe as the 21st of December comes around each year. We wait in anticipation for the unknown mystique of the forces of nature.