Family and neighbors seemed to be less relevant to Gunner than his old buddies, “Hacksaw” and “Bucko,” whom he mentions often, and keeps looking for, as we bounce along the back roads in his truck.
Days later, I spent two hours in Gunner’s five-room home in a trailer camp along a different creek about ten miles away. I met his wife and some of his many in-laws. I looked at his family photos and listened to the often salty stories that he cared to disclose about his colorful and rather erratic life. Gunner ignored the near constant stream of kinfolk who traipsed into his home as he reclined in a heavily padded and well-worn rocking chair inside his front door, fumbling with his pipe and cigars and smoking himself stuperous at midmorning in what little sunlight entered through the smoked-over front windows of his little bungalow. Introductions occurred only when I initiated them. Gunner seemed hazy about the names of some of his in-laws and grandchildren who walked by on their way to the kitchen. He seemed to regard his family, kin, and neighbors matter-of-factly, without enthusiasm and with a hint of indifference—if not annoyance.
Gunner and I posed for some photos in front of his house as I was saying good-bye. He found enough energy to feign a surprisingly energetic punch to my belly, and mumbled, “Always wanted to do that to an officer.” Looking back on it now, I am glad that I was able to oblige him.1
Other Views of Buffalo Creek
One of the most famous books on the subject of the disaster at Buffalo Creek in 1972 is Kai Erikson’s Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood, published in 1976, four years after the flood.