The Johnstown Flood/Once an Eagle/Ammie, Come Home/Gone: A Trio of Short Stories/Sarang [antikvár]

1.''FLAGS, BANNERS AND FLOWERS"Again that morning there had been a bright frost in the hollow below the dam, and the sun was not up long before storm clouds rolled in from the southeast. By afternoon a light rain was falling, and a sharp, gusty wind was blowing down from the mountains, kicking up tiny whitecaps in the lake. The big oaks and hemlocks that crowded the hillside behind the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club began tossing and groaning. Broken branches and young leaves whipped through the air.The club was a private summer resort on the western shore of a man-made mountain lake in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, halfway between the crest of the Allegheny range and the city of Johnstown. On the afternoon of Thursday, May 30, Memorial Day, 1889, it was not quite ten years old. In three weeks the summer season was to start, but now the place looked almost deserted.Sometime not long after dark, a young man employed by the club as "resident engineer" stepped out onto the long front porch at the clubhouse to take a look at the weather. He was John G. Parke, Jr., and he had recently finished three years of civil engineering studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He had been on the job at the club for three months, seeing to general repairs and looking after the dam that held back the waters of the lake.11