You Don’t Mess Around With Jim 

                            Jim Croce

Agnes, Harriet and Jim

To say that Hurricane Agnes was devastating is an understatement. To say that Harriet was a force of nature is also an understatement.  Together, they were life changing.

In the spring of 1972, Agnes made her way up the east coast of the United States.  As a hurricane, she really wasn’t much.  Cat 1, max.  However, the rains which were a crucial aspect of her personality threatened death and destruction up and down the eastern seaboard. 

In the spring of ’72, Harriet and I were on the faculty of St. Patrick Junior High, Elmira, New York. It was located several blocks north, up Main Street, from the Chemung River.  My classroom was on the 1^st floor, right above the library in the basement.  Harriet worked in the library.  Our desks were essentially on top of each other.  We passed notes to one another on a string through the windows. 

The school year ended, and as we were all engaged in finish-up activities, Agnes arrived, bringing rain, a lot of rain.  A lot.  Classes were over and all the students were gone for the summer. Our school was safely away from the rising river.  Not only by virtue of the many blocks in distance, but also because of the slight but steady uphill rise in elevation.  We would close up shop and get home before the worst of Agnes hit town.  Just in case, though, before we finally left for the safety of our homes, the staff volunteered to spend the afternoon moving library books.  Harriet had it all organized.  Better safe than sorry.

While a few folks finished up final grades for report cards, several of us went downstairs to the library and, under Harriet’s direction, began to move books as high on the book shelves as we could get and fit them.  It would mean a lot of resorting and reshelving later in the summer, but – better safe than sorry.

We also listened to the news and weather on a little AM radio which Harriet kept on her desk.  Rain. Lots of rain.  Some wind.  And a dam which had been breached.  Upriver from Elmira.  That didn’t sound good.  

Once we’d put as many books as high as we could, and once we’d gotten all the tape recorders and overhead projectors off the floor and onto tables and desks, we went outside to see what we could see of the storm.  It wasn’t as rainy as the reports had indicated.  However, we could see the river.  That was scary.  The Chemung River, which divided downtown on the north from the Southside, had obviously overflowed its banks and inundated aptly named Water Street, the main east-west thoroughfare across the city.  Amazed, we headed slowly down the street toward the flooded center of the city.  From our point of view, anyone living on the south side of town would have a tough time getting home.  As I lived about 20 miles south of the city, and as the highway paralleled the river, I began to think that I, too, might have a tough time getting home.

We hadn’t walked far – not much more than a block or so – when we stopped.  Stunned.  For a brief moment, we could not believe what we were seeing.  The river was approaching us faster than we were walking toward it!  The water, flowing east and south, was spreading north.  We backed our way up the sidewalk toward the school.  The river came closer.  We walked faster; the water got ever closer.  We turned, picked up the pace and headed for the park just north of – and slightly higher than – the main entrance to school.  We watched as the water rose. We listened as water crashed into the gym which was a newer, separate building on the south side of the main school.  We cringed as the water exploded through the street-level windows which were above the book shelves in the library.

Harriet lost it.  “Better safe than sorry!” she roared, her naturally bawdy, contagious laughter catching the rest of us by complete surprise.  “Better stupid than smart.  Better wet than read.” 

And so it began.  Quite literally, the first day of the rest of our lives.  “Goddamn Agnes.”  Then,  “Agnes Day,” she intoned to the tune of Agnus Dei.  “She’s no lamb of God, that’s for damn sure.”

We all laughed.  We realized how ridiculous our efforts had been in moving books to higher shelves when the windows were still above them.  We realized how helpless we were in the face of nature on a rampage.  We realized, too, that what had happened to our school had also likely happened to many of our homes. 

Harriet lost it again.  Harriet, Eddy, her husband, and their three sons lived a few blocks west and a few blocks south of the school.  It took no stretch of imagination to understand that, if what we had just seen had happened as far from the river as we were, anyone closer to the river would be even more in the path and deeper under water.  No laughter this time; tears. 

There were no cell phones in 1972.  Trying to make contact with family and friends in a situation such as that was all but impossible.  Eddy and the boys were somewhere else in the city, Eddy at work, the boys….  Harriet did not know where the boys were.  At that moment, she realized that her home was almost certainly destroyed, her husband’s place of business gone and her family scattered to places unknown.  Near panic set in.  She was alone.

Those of us who had been involved in moving books and watching the river rise now clustered around Harriet.  There was nothing we could do except be there with her.  Harriet had two favorite songs.  One was “All the Cowboys Want To Marry Harriet” … ‘cuz she’s so handy with a lariat.’ The other was Jim Croce’s current hit, “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim.”  Since we were not all “on her veranda, oh what a line they hand ya”,  Croce kicked in.  “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape….”  A life rule.  “You don’t spit into the wind.”  Another.   “You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger”, and you don’t mess around with… Harriet.  We were about to be schooled in the rules.  The rules of survival.

Harriet took a long, deep breath and stopped crying.  She squared her shoulders, pulled herself 163 pounds up to her full 5’1” height and said something to the effect of, “I’ve just about had all of this crap that I’m gonna take!” and started off in the direction of her home. How she planned to get there or what she intended to do if she made it were not notions any of us brought up.  Harriet was going home.

“Those damn kids better be there when I get home,” she said.  “They’re probably just screwing around some place.  They’re just like their father…..”  We all started laughing and in unison completed the punch line she was infamous for:  “And you’ll never tell them who he is!”

“Damn right!” she responded, never missing a beat.  “If they’re not there……”

“You’ll have a ceteret.”  (A ceteret was what she threatened to have whenever her boys caused her grief.  She’d get mad, start yelling, etc…. Thus, a ceteret.)

Mother Nature had just thrown a curve, but Mother Harriet was not one to buckle.  Forces of nature take on a life of their own.  Survival was the priority, now.  Failure was not an option, and the rules would see her through.

Just how Harriet got to her house, we will never know.  How she found Eddy and the boys is another mystery.  What we did learn was that she did eventually contact her husband and sons, gathered them together.  They even found Roy, their ungroomed Poodle which thought it was a Basset and howled at the moon. Together, they regrouped, found a place of shelter and settled in for the long haul.

Her home had been destroyed.  The river had risen so fast and run so swiftly that there was not much left.  The water line indicated that the Chemung reached levels on the first floor that were just higher than Harriet’s head.  The basement, furnace, washer and dryer were useless.  On the main floor of her house, the furniture, kitchen appliances, food, and keepsakes were strewn somewhere else around the neighborhood and beyond.  All the family had left were their beds and clothing which had not been in the laundry in the basement.  Family memorabilia.  Just a memory.  The rule: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, and you don’t look back.

Agnes bored quickly.  She did her thing and petered out. The saving grace was that it had all happened fast and that it was summer.  Once the storm had passed, and the water receded, the weather cleared, and stayed fairly dry.  Oddly enough, even the humidity didn’t rise to an uncomfortable level right away.  Things in the open air began to dry out.  Once major debris was moved, roads were reopened and local travel picked up.  The job of the summer was to clean up and restore a sense of normalcy.  Communities banded together to help one another. The school staff volunteered to do all they could to clean, repair and freshen up to ensure that the building was ready for September. 

We started in the library.  Hundreds upon hundreds of volumes lay swollen in the damp, dank basement of the building.  Not much air flow there.  Not enough, anyway.  Mildew, rot and soggy, soggy paper.

We shoveled out book after book after book.  It was important to us that the library be restored. It was Harriet’s domain.  Her other home.  As days went by and became hot, the fetid smell of decaying literature, science and research became overpowering.    For her part, Harriet helped.  For our part, we also spent hours at Harriet’s home, helping clean and clear their property.  The family had secured a small, government supplied house trailer to live in.  As it was not much larger than a big camper, they used a combination of cramped trailer space with the upstairs of their house.  Neither was enough; together it helped the five of them cope and adjust.  Rule: You don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Buzz Horrigan’s Irish Pub was an Elmira institution.  Located between school and Harriet’s home, it had been our hangout during the school year, our TGIF place. It continued to be a place of respite during that long, arduous summer.  Horrigan’s had a rule: no women were served at the bar.  Oh, women were served.  It was tradition, however, that they did not step up to the bar, itself, and order or drink.  Respect.  That was the reason.  Women deserved respect and standing at a bar was unladylike.

During the summer of 1972, the female students of Elmira College had fully embraced Women’s Liberation.  And Buzz Horrigan’s Irish Pub had its old-fashioned, chauvinistic rule about women at the bar.  The girls of Elmira College took it upon themselves to set things straight.  Night after night, they came into the bar.  They demanded service.  Night after night, they were served whatever they wanted, as much as they wanted, as long as they were sitting at a table.  There were rumblings, demands at the bar, refusals of service, fussing and fuming, lots of drinks all around. Each night, a few more young women showed up. Night after night, we watched this little drama play out.  Finally, after an especially grueling day of rotted books and fetid paper, with an aching need for a few cold draughts, Harriet’s patience had worn thin.  The girls began to infiltrate.  Pretty soon, they had reached critical mass.  It may have been the day, the heat or the rowdier-than-usual attitude that evening, but the demand for service at the bar was approaching fever pitch.  As she had on Agnes Day, Harriet lost it.

“I’ve about had it with these kids and their stupid-ass women’s lib crap,” she whispered around the table where a group of us sat.  “I’m gonna do it.”  And with that, she squared her shoulders, pulled herself 163 pounds up to her full 5’1” height and marched over to the bar.

“OK, ladies, now hear this,” she shouted above the crowd.  The room became quiet.  “Slappy,” she said to old Slappy Gallagher, the long,long-time bartender, “gimme a goddamn draught of stout!  In fact, gimme two.  I’m thristy.”

“You got it, Kiddo,” he said as he reached for a mug.  He tipped the big glass under the spout, pulled back on the long wooden handle and filled one glass then another with dark, foamy brew.  Harriet downed the first while standing at the bar. “Thanks,” she said and carried the second back to the table.  That was it.

For a short moment, Buzz Horrigan’s Irish Pub was dead silent. Then it erupted.  Shouts of victory.  Giggles, screeches, cheers.  A few of the girls walked to the bar and ordered drinks.  Within minutes, they spilled back out onto the street to proclaim their defeat of male dominance.  In fifteen minutes the place was quiet, the girls gone.  Save an occasional young woman on a date, they never came back.  No woman has ever been served at that bar again, either.  Rule: don’t spit into the wind and choose your battles carefully.

In time, things began to take on a more normal life.  Water Street, that main downtown street which had been so severely devastated never did come back as it had been.  In the interim, other retail areas emerged, different pieces of commerce took over and a long, protective park boarded the river. Eddy’s place of business reopened in another part of the city.

School started in September.  Harriet was back home in her freshly painted, newly stocked, brightly lit library, just below my first floor room. The gym, so heavily destroyed by water, was replaced, better than ever. In time, too, Harriet’s home was restored, refurbished, clothing replaced. The trailer was removed. It took longer than she’d hoped, by several long months, but then, thousands of people had been displaced, homes destroyed and lives turned upside down.  What did we learn?  Agnes was an act of nature; Harriet was a force of nature. We all survived.

Rules: Don’t tug on Superman’s cape. Don’t spit into the wind. Don’t pull the mask of the old Lone Ranger. 

Choose your battles. Never give up. 

Ever.