Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
This was going normally at Christmas 1955 until that call came from Stockton. My Aunt Kaye called Mom and said Stockton had flooded, and her home was sitting in 7 feet of water from the overflow of the levee across the street! Aunt Kaye said everything was lost, including the Christmas presents for cousin Tom and Gayla.
Throughout its history, Stockton has been prone to periodic and often catastrophic floods. In 1955, the so-called “Christmas Eve Flood” inundated much of the city. It was caused by a series of “pineapple expresses” barreling in from Hawaii, by an early and rapid snow melt in the Sierra, by eight days of steady rainfall in San Joaquin County, and by a preventable human miscalculation.
Although Pacific Avenue was temporarily closed due to water sloshing into stores, South Stockton felt the brunt of the storm when Mormon Slough began to overflow. A year before, the Stockton City Council had decided, based on bad advice from the Army Corps of Engineers, that the slough was no longer needed for flood control and protection.
It therefore approved filling in part of its bottom for a parking lot and constructing several earthen bridges to join city streets across the chasm. According to The Record columnist Michael Fitzgerald, “through these obstructions, engineers ran a culvert as adequate to the coming flood as a straw to a swimming pool.”
Under water!
We packed up everything the next morning, including several of my presents that had NOT been opened, and headed to Tracy, California, where my grandparents lived. Aunt Kaye and family stayed there on Christmas Eve and for many days afterward, until the water level went down.
Cousin Tom Hale (1944-2017) and Aunt Kaye (1924-2019)
We celebrated Christmas with Ray, Kaye, Tom, Gayla, and my grandparents.
Mom, Dad, and I returned home a couple of days later, as we could not do anything. To get to their home, they needed a boat. The water finally receded a week later, and they went tothe house, but everything was destroyed by the water, including their new 1954 Mercury.
It was a time to remember how families stick together during emergencies.
We were up early and had our cars ready for their baffy! Our new car wash guy, Manuel Rios, was here at 8:00 am sharp and began making the automobiles look brand new. When I went outside to give him Ribon’s keys, the Silver Fox looked like it was in a snow bank. There were white bubbles and soap everywhere!!
