![\"g3824_j8c32_1989_u5_front\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/files\/2016\/12\/G3824_J8C32_1989_U5_front-1024x965.jpg\")
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What was it like?<\/strong><\/p>\n Novelist, autobiographer, and ethnographer, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) published Mules and Men<\/em> (1935) in the three years between her first two novels. Hurston uses the narrative of her own travels in Eatonville, Florida and New Orleans, Louisiana to link the stories she gathered to create this collection of African American folklore. In this tale, a man named John enters heaven after the Johnstown flood and tries to tell everyone of the experience he just had. The comparison here reveals the mythological proportions that the flood had taken within forty years.<\/p>\n Way after while he went over to Ole Peter and said: “Thought you said everybody would be nice and polite?”<\/p>\n Peter said, “Yeah, Ah said it. Ain’t everybody treatin’ you right?”<\/p>\n John said, “Naw. Ah jus’ walked up to a man as nice and friendly as Ah could be and started to tell ‘im ’bout all dat water Ah left back there in Johnstown and instead of him turnin’ me a friendly answer he said, \u2018Shucks! You ain’t seen no water!\u2019 and walked off and left me standin’ by myself.”<\/p>\n “Was he a\u00a0ole<\/em>\u00a0man wid a crooked walkin’ stick?” Peter ast John.<\/p>\n “Yeah.”<\/p>\n “Did he have whiskers down to here?” Peter measured down to his waist.<\/p>\n “He sho did,” John tol’ ‘im.<\/p>\n “Aw shucks,” Peter tol’ ‘im. “Dat was Ole Nora. You can’t tell\u00a0him<\/em>\u00a0nothin’ ’bout no flood.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A hybrid between a natural and a man-made disaster, the Johnstown Flood\u2019s destruction has only been matched by the flooding from hurricanes in Galveston, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana. When the South Fork Dam failed on the afternoon of 31 … Continue reading