Hubbard & Clarks Christmas Eve 2010

Tom O'Hara And The Deluge

In the spring of 1948 there was a short but very heavy deluge of rain in the area of Hubbard Hill.  I remember getting up in the morning and seeing a swiftly moving brown stream of water in the ditch in front of our house and, later, the three to five feet deep canyon the water had carved.  This was in a ditch that was usually dry and even in the heaviest storms in my memory,  only swelled the stream to about a foot of water.

Across the road and barnyard, the creek behind the barn was a rushing torrent and all this water was coming from the just the very top of the watershed.

Lower down the mountains and rolling hills, the Flat Creek valley accumulated all this water and more as it drained the whole area around Hubbard Hill and fed if finally, into the Gilboa Dam or, the Schoharie Creek flowing into Middleburg.

We drove down through Flat Creek to get a look at the damage and I remember lots of water in the flats around the Merel Hubbard and Pickett places. Further down the road where the grade increased, the road was partially washed out with a deep and wide gully cut through by the rushing water.  Out in the middle of that creek,  caught on a large rock in a cluster of small trees and sitting there crookedly, was a brown coupe that was owned by Tom O’Hara.

It seemed that the previous night, Tom had been seeing my first cousin Betty at Merel Hubbard’s farm and decided to drive back to Prattsville during the storm. The flood somehow got his car.

I remember him talking about it and I asked him how he escaped.  He said he had climbed through the trees out of the creek and, at the time, the branches he used seemed about the size of his fingers. He held up his hand with spread fingers to show me.  He was kind of laughing while he said this and I can still see his face as he described his escape.  

In thinking about it now, his easy manner must have belied the truly harrowing experience it must have been when he felt the car, caught by the flood waters, moving off the road into the deluge and, the subsequent wind and rain driven escape.

In my mind, his story conjured up an image of him desperately opening the car door and scrambling back to safety through the finger-sized branches at the top of the trees above the rushing water.  To a nine year old boy, this was a heroic tale of danger, bravery and adventure and I never forgot it.  This only added to his degree of  “coolness” that I did not encounter again until James Dean came on the scene.

By the way, I believe this was the same car they used for their wedding get-away in June of that year.

Tom Ohara and Betty Hubbard's Wedding Reception

I well remember Tom Ohara and Betty Hubbard’s  wedding held at Uncle Merel’s farm on a very nice day in the summer.

Tommy had a very cool brown two-door coupe, I think it was a Chevy and of course, it was in impeccable condition.

As the reception was going on, several of the younger men at the wedding commenced to rigging the car for the drive-away.  They tied lots of tin cans and streamers to the under carriage of the car.  They then also somehow attached a large fire-cracker that would somehow explode when the car drove off.

I remember Tom and Betty emerging from the front of the house and making their way to the car parked under the trees along Flat Creek Road.  They were showered with rice;  noise makers and hand clapping accompanied them.  They were laughing and grinning.

I was standing close to the car and when they approached, I said, “Boy, you’re really starting off with a bang”.  Some of the people groaned.

As they drove off there was a very loud bang and the streamers, cans and junk attached to the car rattled off with them.

After they left,  several people including my sister Marilyn, told me that I had given away the surprise.  

I thought I had just expressed a clever pun.....