When weather alerts of potential flooding along the Pigeon River in Clyde began leaking out the afternoon of September 8, 2004, Harold and Elsa Higgins eyed the riverbank suspiciously from their backyard and decided to take some early precautions.

Along with the classic response to rescue photo albums, Harold, 85, also targeted several boxes of mints that he sells in front of Wal-Mart to raise money for the Lion’s Club.

“I told Elsa I got to take those mints up to Jack’s place. I don’t want to get them wet,” Harold recalled.

When Harold showed up at Jack’s front door with the mints, the fellow Lion’s Club member told Harold to bring over as many things as he wanted for safe keeping and invited him to stay the night

“I went back home and picked up a few more boxes of stuff, and before I could get them in the car, the police and the firemen and the rescue came through, all in a row, and told us to get out and get out fast,” Harold said.

“They said we had to get out fast and no one was to stay,” Elsa said. “They were literally pushing people out. They knew somehow it was coming.”

Harold threw more photos, personal documents and his stamp collection in the car and the couple fled the rising water.

“I never expected a surge like that,” Harold said.

“Over four feet high? Can you imagine?” Elsa asked.

“Never,” Harold said.

“No, never,” Elsa said.

Returning to their house three days later was a nightmare. The floodwaters had coated their home and possessions in stinky sludge and smashed everything to pieces.

“I opened the door and backed out. The stench in there, you would not believe,” Elsa said.

The ensuing days were a whirlwind, between picking through the soggy, shattered remnants of their life and dealing with the bureaucracy of government aid. They took breaks from salvaging what they could of their possessions to fill out paperwork at the temporary Federal Emergency Management Agency office in Clyde’s town hall.

“For probably three weeks we were there every day. We kept filling out paperwork trying to get help, trying to get a grant,” Elsa said. “We signed everything there was to sign. They said it may help you, it may not, but we signed up for it.”

Meanwhile, their flood insurance company harangued them for a list of what they lost.

“They said they wouldn’t give us any money if we didn’t have that list,” Harold said.

“I told him there was no way I could have him a list of all the things we lost in three or four days,” Elsa said.

The losses from the flood kept mounting, like the 275 gallons of kerosene they had just bought in preparation for winter. The tank had been ripped from the side of their house.

But as for most of their possessions — the ones they cherished the most — they could make lists until they were blue in the face and money would never replace them. They lost their address book, with no way to call family and friends except their daughter and one old next-door neighbor in Vermont where they used to live whose numbers they remembered. Nor could money replace Elsa’s cookbooks.

“I said to Harold, ‘My cookbooks!’ I always made things for the church suppers,” Elsa said. “I would come home at night balling.”

Help is on the way ... maybe

Despite the stacks of paperwork and heroic promises at press conferences, the couple soon learned that FEMA was not the knight in shining armor they had hoped for. In their younger years, Elsa worked as a housekeeper and Harold as a wallpaper hanger. They saved diligently, but those savings made them ineligible for grants, which were reserved only for the poorest flood victims. Instead, the Higgins were offered a loan to rebuild their home and replace their possessions.

“They were going to give him a loan for 30 years. He would be 115 years old by the time he paid of the $40,000 loan. Isn’t that something? That’s FEMA for you. When they came through here, all they were interested in was making money on these loans,” Elsa said.

The Higgins had saved their whole life and paid off their home so they wouldn’t be trying to make mortgage payments while in their 80s and living on a fixed income.

Not only did having some semblance of savings penalize the Higgins, but they had flood insurance, too. They almost wish they hadn’t. Their flood insurance didn’t cover furniture, appliances or possessions of any sort. The payout wasn’t even enough to buy a used singlewide mobile home. But it was enough that FEMA turned their back on them for free aid. The Higgins didn’t know what to do.

Even the rental assistance FEMA provided fell far short of what they needed. They got seven months worth of rent, but a year later the Higgins are still months away from a permanent home. When asked how FEMA arrived at seven months, the couple threw up their hands in unison.

“That’s all you got from FEMA,” Harold said.

In reality, it only covered five months of rent. A FEMA number cruncher decided average rent in Haywood County was about $350 a month. Anyone cruising rentals in the classified section lately knows that’s far from the case today, let alone last fall when more than 100 families were suddenly homeless and scrambling for low-rent housing.

Like the lost tank of heating oil, the little expenses kept piling up, like a storage unit they had to rent to keep salvaged belongings until they find a permanent home.

The church community steps up

In the end, it was the Higgins’ church, Clyde Central Methodist, that got them through the trauma of the flood. Church volunteers from Charlotte spontaneously showed up in their yard to help as the couple tried to deal with a house in shambles. The volunteers took over the clean up.

When the couple had to scrub off precious items salvaged from the wreckage, the church provided them bleach and rubber gloves and sponges.

When they had nothing to eat, nowhere to cook and no money to eat out, the church put hot meals in front of them. And when they finally got a kitchen of their own, it was the church that stocked their pantry when their food stamp allotment of $258 ran out. When they had no furniture, the church produced a kitchen table and chairs.

The list of needs is endless, and Elsa was shocked again and again when she realized all the things she had accumulated over the years that had been taken from her in one fell swoop.

“When we first moved into our apartment, I realized ‘I don’t even have a pot to cook any supper in.’ I had never thought of it,” Elsa said. Again, it was the church that came through with cookware.

And even when it’s a new house they need but can’t afford, the church has offered to piece together contractors and volunteers to build them one.

“We have to supply the materials and they get the plumbers, electricians, builders and their workers and volunteers to do stuff,” Elsa said. “By saving the labor costs, we can get the house a lot more reasonable.”

The Methodist organization hired a full-time flood relief coordinator in Haywood County, Jackie Bolden, to orchestrate the volunteer efforts and rebuilding.

“Boy she has just been wonderful,” Harold said of Bolden. “I don’t know what we would do without the church.”

It has been a big load to bear, though. Nearly 30 families who attended Clyde United Methodist were flood victims.

“To this day our church is open,” Elsa said. “The church has been so good to us. We consider them our family. I don’t mean just monetary, I mean support, too.”

Help poured out of the woodworks from other sources as well.

Old neighbors from Vermont sent a gift certificate to Wal-Mart and their physician, Dr. Nancy Freeman, gave them a sofa. The Salvation Army even gave them $500.

“It’s only this last month that things are starting to finally come together. Before that nothing, nothing, nothing,” Elsa said.

The good-natured couple has found humor where they can and relished small pleasures, like the first meal they made after moving into their own apartment. They opened cans of tuna fish and salad dressing their daughter sent them and a loaf of bread from the church.

“We made tuna fish sandwiches and were so happy with that,” Elsa said. “We had a microwave, so we could even have coffee in the morning.”

Today, Harold keeps his most prized possessions close by. Two World War II medals sit on an end table and a plaque from his church sits on top of the television, both within easy reach to share with visitors. The two medals came from a Vermont veteran’s association. He got them in the mail one year ago, just a couple of days before the flood. As he packed up those boxes of photos and documents before fleeing his home, he saw the medals, grabbed them and threw them in. He still keeps them in the envelope they came in, sporting an Aug. 31, 2004, postmark.

“Isn’t that something,” Harold said, shaking his head and marveling at that postmark, trying to remember that innocent time just one year ago.