Swingin' It and Wingin' It at Wyngate
#303 / Flood Time Capsule: 2012
A dozen years ago this week, The Flood rolled into Barboursville’s Wyngate Senior Living Community to share new year’s greetings, laughs, stories and tunes with old friends and Floodster relatives.
Beloved Flood fans Shirley and Norman Davis were living there. So were Floodster Emeritus Jacob Scarr’s grandparents, which made this visit particularly special. That’s because our young guitarist had only a day or two left in his holiday break before he had to fly back to Denver to start his second semester as a University of Colorado freshman.
When the band arrived, Wyngate’s hall was filled and ready to rock. Some even had their dancing shoes on. Here’s a tune from the rowdy evening:
Cousin Helen
Our guest of honor was Helen Diddle, Dave Peyton’s 103-year-old cousin, who had lived at Wyngate for a while by then.
Helen was a secretary for 37 years at Guyandotte Elementary and at Huntington East High School. Recognized as Cabell County’s oldest living citizen, she was celebrated during West Virginia's 150th birthday festivities in 2013, a few months before her death in November of that year.
In those last years, Helen was failing, but she still had some fun memories of our visit that winter’s night, as Dave related in a story at a weekly Flood rehearsal. Click the button below to hear Dave telling it:
The Car Keys Story
Meanwhile, another wacky moment from that night gave birth of a fresh bit of Floodishness.
The audio snippet below begins with Charlie and David reporting on the incident, then segues to the actual moment in the show when Michelle is trying to tell a story, and then … well, click the button to hear what happened:
Miss Rose Gets Her Kazoo
The highlight of the entire evening was the awarding of perennial Flood den mother Rose Marie Riter’s kazoo along with our announcement that she was now and for evermore “an ornery member” of The 1937 Flood, with all the rights and privileges that entailed.
We already had dedicated the latest album, Wade in the Water, to Rose and to Norman and Shirley, so recognition of her Flood-worthy orneriness was a natural next step.
Click the button below to hear Charlie and Michelle making the presentation and then keep listening so you don’t miss Miss Rose’s debut performance of classic kazoory. (Who knew Rose Riter could still blush?)
Rose later commemorated the award by having her certificate and that original kazoo framed for display in her home:
“In case of kazoo emergency,” Peyton would later quip, “break glass!”
For Historical Context….
If you’re new to Flood Watch and wonder where this particular episode fits into the larger Flood narrativce, check out our “Flood History” section (click here), which links to details of the main events in the band’s half century story.
