ALLISON, Ark. — Gene Young is 75, but in the last four years he has lived through two “hundred-year floods” in this north Arkansas hamlet, and the area has experienced four in less than a century.

In the most recent flood, Young and his wife, Ginger, escaped the rising waters from the second floor of their house.

“I stepped off the upstairs porch into a fishing boat,” Ginger Young said.

The entire first floor of their house was under water, and the flood crested just before getting into the upstairs. The nearest dry land was 100 yards away, going up the mountain on Highway 5.

The Youngs, who moved to Allison from Vicksburg almost eight years ago, operate an RV camp in Stone County, at the junction of Sylamore Creek and the White River. Their business, called Hooks, offers full-service hookups, canoe rentals and trout fishing.

“It was a pretty view here,” Gene said.

Located at a junction of Highways 5, 9, and 14, with the clear waters of the Sylamore flowing nearby against a backdrop of the rugged Ozark Mountains, the site changed before their eyes as hundreds of round hay bales floated past, as well as dead farm animals.

“We literally lived in the waters, not just near them,” Gene said.

The most recent flood was in 2004, but there was another in 1982 and one in 1916. In the ’04 flood, water rose almost to the Young’s back porch, and official weather predictions were that this flood would not surpass the water mark of four years ago.

After checking the forecasts, Young figured the worst it might get would be a foot inside the ground floor, so he raised everything three feet, just to be safe, but it was to no avail.

“We had warnings,” he said. “The Corps of Engineers gave us a forecast that the river would not get any higher than it did in ’04. They revised that to another foot, and we still would have been all right, but then the water came up about 14 feet higher than it did in 2004, so the end result was that we got a good flood.”

“The water got to 39-point-something,” Gene said, “which is about the same as in 1982. It didn’t go over the river bridge, but it lapped at its bed. Less than a mile away, Jo Jo’s, a two-story motel and restaurant, was completely submerged except for the roof.”

When the Youngs went to bed about 11 on Tuesday night, March 18, after listening to the forecasts and watching the water creep toward their garden, they felt pretty safe. About 3:30, Ginger awakened and looked out to see water covering part of their campground. At 10:30, with the water still rising, they decided to move into one of the rental cabins on higher ground.

“The water was waist deep, so Gene waded out to where some canoes were floating away, got one and pulled it back to the house,” Ginger said.

She doesn’t swim, so it was with fear and anxiety that she managed to get off the outdoor stairs, along with two suitcases, into the canoe. Gene waded through the water beside her, guiding the canoe “because I knew if I tried to climb in it would capsize.”

“We were going to move into one of the rental cabins,” Ginger said, but when it also flooded they made a hurried trip back to their house, in a fishing boat, so she could get what she wanted to save. It was about 1 in the afternoon, March 19, and the water began rising so rapidly that after about 15 minutes in the second story living quarters, stuff and things became unimportant, and she told Gene, “I’m out of here.”

That’s when she climbed into the boat.

Gene had shops and sheds where he kept his tools, and all were lost with water 5 feet above the roofs. The RV park had 24 pads for campers, two cabins, a bath house, a picnic area and the Youngs’ home. They had done all the work themselves — grading, water lines, a sewage system, electrical installations, and built most of the various structures. The site is owned by their son-in-law and his father.

“In other words, I started to work when I retired,” Gene said.

Both were natives of Arkansas, Gene from Parkin and Ginger from Earl in the Delta. They first moved to Vicksburg in 1961, moved away, then returned. For six years, Gene was Warren County road foreman and then worked for W.J. Runyon for 28 years. Ginger worked at the Warren County Health Department. The Youngs have three daughters — Sally, Lori and Stacey.

The flood isn’t the only disaster they’ve experienced this year.

More than a foot of snow fell in the area and remained for days, and then a month or more ago a tornado hit the county seat, Mountain View, demolishing homes and businesses and dumping debris as far away as Allison. Ginger

said she feels like she has lived without electricity more than with it in the last few months.

There was a positive note, however. “You find good people during a disaster,” Gene said.

One man brought a van and his crew and saved everything in the rental cabins, stored the items and offered the Youngs a free place to stay — and they hardly knew him.

“True friends just show up and help,” Gene said.

“You come up to the Ozarks not expecting to be flooded,” he said. “But after living in Campbell’s Swamp and at Eagle Lake, I see that water can go anywhere.”

With forecasts changing several times a day, he isn’t about to begin making a lot of repairs, explaining, “We’re not out of the woods yet. You can’t imagine the mess. It was not just flood water, it was mud water. This is where that Mississippi mud came from — from up in this country. It just goes right on down there and settles in Vicksburg.”

“This is a good place to live,” he concluded, “except don’t build your house in a low place. Find you a hill or a rock pile.”

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Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.