The old preacher sipped his thermos of coffee, holding a fishing rod in the other hand. He asked what I wanted most in this life.
I stared at the lake surface and told him I wanted peace. I was young, I came from a broken home. Peace was all I wanted.
“What does peace look like to you?” the clergyman asked, casting his line.
I shrugged. “Someday,” I said. “I’d like to live on Lake Martin.”
He laughed. “You think this lake is peaceful, do you?”
Then he told me a story.
A hundred years ago, the powers that were gathered around a big boardroom table. Executives in three-piece linen suits, smoking great Havannas as long as your thigh, cheerfully commiserating about how hard it was to find good help these days.
A chairman banged a gavel. In a booming voice he said, “Come to order!”
The men sat straight and paid attention.
Then, the chairman explained that the Alabama Power company would construct a dam. They would flood the Tallapoosa River valley, and use the river to generate power.
“Brilliant idea, old chap!” replied one supporter.
“Dam brilliant, old man!” said another.
Then they all patted each other on the back and went back to talking about their yachts.
The Cherokee Bluffs Dam would be 168 feet high, 2,000 feet long, with three Francis turbines, churning out electricity by the kilowatt hour, transforming the Twenty-Second State forever.
But there was a problem. There were towns in the valley. There was Benson, Irwinton, Kowaliga, Church Hill, and the lovely town of Susannah.
One board member waved his cigar and chuckled. “Don’t worry about the towns, gentlemen! We’ll just buy them out!”
“But these are farmers, sir,” explained another. “Farmers can’t be bought.”
The board members laughed so hard they choked on their smoke. This is America. Everything can be bought.
The process of submerging the valley was not peaceful. It all started one sunny June morning in 1926. The Dixie Construction company built a temporary railroad, laying miles of track, just to move the heavy machines into the valley.
Steam shovels, excavators, and cranes began populating the small town of Susannah, one-by-one, like futuristic visitors from another planet.
The townspeople didn’t HAVE to leave, of course. The Company wasn’t THAT heartless. If you lived in Susannah, for example, you had two options: (a) Sell, or (b) stay put and die.
Within weeks, the company leveled homes, obliterated buildings, decimating the one-room schoolhouse. Susannah’s pretty church steeple caught fire, finally falling sideways into the inferno.
The Company dug up her cemeteries. They relocated 923 graves. They cut and burned all Susannah’s trees. The smoke could be seen from Montgomery.
The flood happened an inch at a time. Water trickled into half-charred homes. The remains of Susannah’s schools, churches, general stores, post office, bank, sawmill, grist mill, and cotton gin, were submerged. An entire community died, along with its covered-dish socials, spring dances, all-day sings.
By 1928, Susannah was lost beneath the largest man-made reservoir—not only in Alabama; not only in the U.S.—but in the world; 40,000 acres of water, with upwards of 700 miles of shoreline, spanning from Eclectic, to Alexander City, to Dadeville.
Susannah’s townspeople became migrants. Refugees were often seen walking highways, carrying possessions. Sometimes, the children were heard singing as they walked. They sang an old song.
“Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me,
“For I come from Alabama,
“With a banjo on my knee.”
The old preacher gently reeled his line and bore his eyes into me.
“Nothing in life is peaceful, son,” he said. “Not even lakes and rivers. Real peace, you see, comes from one place.”
“Which place is that?” I asked.
He smiled. “You’re asking the wrong fisherman.”