I had a big audit this week and (in a fit of desperation) took my auditor up to Sciple’s Mill, whcih you may remember was the subject of this post
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I had heard rumors that the mill had experienced a disaster sometime this past month and wanted to see for myself if what I had heard was true. Sadly it was. We have endured heavy rains all this fall and one “dark and stormy night” about a month back, the mill pond gates broke. The following link shows the mill (Wooden building on ¼ Right side of photo) and the gates (Left side of photo – ¾ of structure that is under the two tin roofs).
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Here is a better photo of what washed away:
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Within moments all of the mill pond gates washed away, including the post supports and all of the roof.
Mr. Siple (The hat is real – not a photo op fake)
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was there working on the repairs and stopped for twenty minutes to talk with us about that night. The mill pond is pretty deep and covers about twenty acres behind the gates. All of it came through in a huge wash that took everything with it except for the most valuable part, which is the mill. There is a store across the dirt road from the mill that I mentioned in my post as the site of the Saturday night Sciples Mill Opry
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Mr. Sciple said the store had two feet of water in it. I looked and could see no obvious damage to the store, which is in pretty bad shape on a good day.
The thing that impressed me was that he was rebuilding the mill pond gates. In fact, he was 60% - 70% finished with them and said he hoped to be grinding corn again in two weeks. He had a large supply of rough sawn cypress that he (and two helpers) were using and I asked where he found such nice wood. He indicated he had located a saw mill outside Carthage, Mississippi (40 miles away) that was still sawing cypress and that he had gone there. In case you don’t know, almost all of the cypress in the south has been cut down. The stuff is really difficult to find (let me translate that into ”expensive to find”). I was very impressed to see this 78 year old man busily working to rebuild his 219 year old water powered grist mill. My inspection was not required, but I carry a journeyman’s union card in Carpentry (thanks to college age work and a father who was a founding member of a Carpenters’ union local) and I quickly appraised the rebuild as first rate. However, It was a little sad that for a few years, the old gray water gates will be new looking and not so beat up as before the flood washed them away. I guess that old wood is floating somehwere down teh Tombigbee River, headed toward Mobile Bay.
There had been a story going around Kemper County that a new Bonny and Clyde movie was to be filmed this next year and that they had come to the mill to survey it for a scene in the movie.
From this, I guess Bonny (aka Hillary Duff) will be a real looker:
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I guess they wanted to show Bonny and Clyde buying corn meal. Anyhow, I asked Mr. Sciple about it and he told me that I knew as much as he did about Hollywood movie people coming to look at his mill for use in a movie. He said that he had heard the rumors, too and as far as he knew, no one had been by to scout out the mill for the movie.
Rumors – what can you do?
Anyhow, if you can make it a few weeks longer using store bought corn meal, Mr. Sciple will be back in business nose to the grindstone I guess.
His humor is somewhat dry and when I said that I guess what I had heard was true and the pond was gone, he said “Yep, I had a power failure a few weeks back.”
