Transcript by Greta Gerstener

Rachel: South Louisiana. We sit on the edge of the Gulf watching the waters rise, getting hotter, wetter, colder, and drier in the blink of an eye, our streets flood so badly we can't get to school or work, and we've lost another football field worth of wetlands. But the exciting news is that everywhere you look, we are adapting. Figuring out how to rise with the water plan better and listen to nature. I'm your host, Rachel Nederveld, and this is No Matter the Water, a series of interviews with neighbors across the region who are figuring out how to live with our unpredictable weather.

This episode is one of the ones I'm most excited for you to hear because it can change so much about the way we live with water. While the insurance crisis is causing so many communities to fold or change, there's a proven option that we've yet to really take advantage of. Don't raise your home, make it float. In fact, there's a Louisiana community that's doing it already.

Buddy: They think I'm nuts, I guess, you know, really. I mean, who would want to live in a floating house in the middle of the woods with alligators and snakes, you know, but it was only the practical solution for me. It seemed very logical what I did, to me.
My name's David Neil Blalock. I go by Buddy and, I'm 80 years old, born and raised in Bunkie, Louisiana.

Rachel: Where else would you see a house like this down here?

Buddy: You're not gonna see many, maybe if you go down south in the bayou and all, you'll see boat houses and a lot of boat houses are built on barges, so it's mainly a barge with a house on it that has poles to anchor it down.
It's a 16 by 50 house, a big bedroom, a bathroom, a closet in the back, and a big 22 foot by 16 living room kitchen. A third of the year this is a houseboat. The other two thirds is normally a house.

Rachel: We're in the living room of BuddyÕs floating home that's on a lease lot in Old River. It's a camp community on the Raccourci Oxbow Lake, meaning it's an old section of the Mississippi River that was cut off when the river shifted course long ago.
Old River is just north of Morganza between the Mississippi River and the Mississippi levee, which means when the river floods, so does Old River, but Buddy and a few others live here full time.

Buddy: There's a lot of camaraderie here. It's wonderful for a kid, to get on their four wheeler and run up and down the road, or they get together with their bikes riding a levee all the way, the three rivers.

Rachel: Mm-hmm.

Buddy: And I quit drinking about 30 years ago, so that took me out of the social scene up at the landing.

Rachel: Yeah.

Buddy: So a lot of these people, I don't know, they all know me all right, but they know me mainly because of my dog shadow.

Rachel: Buddy was part of the computer industry boom in the early 1970s and with a math degree from LSU went on to work for a global consulting firm.

Buddy: Putting in computer systems, that's how I traveled around the world. Lived in Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Australia, the Philippines, Canada and in 83, I just had enough of the traveling around and all and moved back to Bunky. I'd been living in Bunky with my mom for about six months, and a friend came by and told me that he needed to clear up some debt and he told me he'd sell me his trailer and lot out here for $3,000. I mean, we'd been friends all our life, so I told him, fine, you know, and when I drove out here, I drove up on the levee and boom, there was nothing but water. I said, Lord, I called him and he said, Òoh, it's in the field over there. The farmer pulled it out.Ó I said, well, thanks for telling me.

Rachel: So it was flooded the first time you came out?

Buddy: Yeah. Oh yeah. You know, I went and found it in the field and I said, well, it looked like a nice trailer and I've been out here ever since.
When I first moved out here, there weren't many floods. I mean, you go five or six years and no floods, and then all of a sudden it started flooding pretty regularly.

Rachel: This is mainly because of years of changes to the flood control structure along the Mississippi by the Army Corps of Engineers. And the reason for the flood, be it extreme rain events or wonky Corps policy determines how long the flood will last and how high the water is. It may be three feet deep and last a week, or it could be 20 feet deep and last months.

Buddy: I would get one of the farmers to come in with his big John Deere and pull my trailer out and we'd park it across the levee and I'd live in it until the flood went down and then he'd pull me back in. And so that's what I did for the first nine years when it flooded, had the farmers pull it out. But this trailer was old when I bought it and crossing that levee, that big hump, it really puts a strain on them, it takes a toll on a house. A house trailer is a house trailer, I don't care how good they look. It just was time to do something else.

Rachel: Traditionally, we would think of Buddy's other option as raising the home up on stilts.

Buddy: I was born with one leg shorter than the other, about two inches, and so I knew I couldn't be going up and downstairs. So I, instead of building it up in the air like everybody else does out here, there was one other trailer here that floated and I looked at that and said, well, I'm gonna do that.

Rachel: What did his look like?

Buddy: Oh, it was well done, he had all the styrofoam blocks framed and angled iron and welded to his frame and had poles on all four corners. So that's where I really got the idea that it could work, and I sat down and drew up plans for this.

Rachel: So buddy decided to build his new home to rise with the water.

Buddy: First thing I did was just put a slab down and then I designed the frame and put some really good paint on it to kind of use offshore.

Rachel: So the base of his house is an iron frame painted black, and it's full of giant styrofoam blocks.

Buddy: And then I built a house on top of that, I had the floor down, and the next problem was figuring out if my flotation would work. I had done some computer work with a firm and Bunkie that did sign work, put up the signs for McDonald's and all, and so he and I traded our work. He came out and put up my four poles and tied it to my frame.

Rachel: Imagine four metal poles that go about 20 feet in the air that are attached to each corner of the house. This keeps the home from floating any direction other than straight up and straight down.

Buddy: First time it flooded, there was not knowing if the waves would knock, if I had the styrofoam put up under their right, if it was gonna be strong enough. And, I mean, there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong, but none of 'em did. It all worked out good, that kept me from floating off.

Rachel: Were you nervous the first time it was flooding?

Buddy: Oh, I was pretty anxious not knowing if it was gonna be strong enough. It was all an experiment and I mean there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong, but none of 'em did. It didn't sink, I was so proud.

Rachel: And then how'd you feel the first time you were living in it and it flooded?

Buddy: Oh, yeah that was exciting. Oh yeah, that was really an adventure. It was a maiden voyage, just like you'd take on a boat to work out any of the kinks. But there really weren't any kinks. I mean, every, everything went as I had hoped it would. I'd done a lot of sailing, sailing to Guatemala, you know, from New Orleans, and so I knew living on the water was tough.
And so, uh, this place had really built strong. It really beat my expectations for the first voyage. So to speak, even though we are only going up and down, you know, it, uh, I was really happy.

Rachel: How many floating houses are in the area now, do you know?

Buddy: Oh, I guess 40, I imagine.

Rachel: Floating homes versus stilted homes. What's the difference?

Buddy: You don't have to climb the steps when you get old and you don't have to be afraid. If you put in an elevator that has the safety features where the cable doesn't break and you fall and end up with all kind of back trouble, which a couple of people out here have done.
I mean, if you're up in the air, it doesn't mean you're not gonna flood. Now, a lot of these homes have flooded up in the air. Because they weren't high enough, but nobody expected the water to get that high.

Rachel: Is there ever a time that the stilted houses flooded and the floating ones didn't?

Buddy: When they opened the locks here in Morganza.

Rachel: Which was during the 2011 Mississippi River flood.

Buddy: A lot of these other houses that up in the air had two foot of water in 'em, and once they opened the locks, I drop a foot that night immediately.
So being up in the air. It doesn't mean you're not gonna flood. It depends on how, how high you are, you know?

Rachel: Yeah. How did the floating houses fare during that, that flood?

Buddy: I don't think any of them flooded. None of 'em did. I'm not going to flood when it floods. I'm here just to make sure everything goes right. I mean, there's a mental benefit. For me, it would be a crisis probably for a lot of other people, but they don't go with the flow. You know the old saying, go with the flow. Well, that's pretty much what you gotta do on the river. I mean, you're not gonna stop the river. This is a way to live with the threat of water.

Rachel: How do you know when a flood's gonna come?

Buddy: Channel 2 out of Baton Rouge and they would give it the river stages.

Rachel: meaning the height of the river.

Buddy: First year I watched it and when it got 32 and a half in Baton Rouge

Rachel: That's 32 and a half feet.

Buddy: It crossed that road. I knew when it got to 35, they used that gauge to cut my electricity off, and that's exactly the same time I floated. That's when I rise up off the concrete. So you know, you learn to watch the river stages and that's what I keep an eye on.

Rachel: Okay, so what do you start doing to prepare?

Buddy: Well, I just connect my hose coming out the ground to my house so I've got water, parish good parish water. I make sure my butane bottles are all filled. I have a generator and my butane heater and a butane stove and it, it keeps this place really toasty and that's nice when that wind, north wind is blowing. The only thing I have to do is stock up with food and stuff, dog food, so I don't have to carry those big bags in my boat, so that's about it. Everything else takes care of itself.

Rachel: So during the flood it comes, and then how long does it usually last and what do you do?

Buddy: I anytime it is, it is sunny and nice, I go out, I go out, I leave my truck on the, on the levee and just pull my boat up to the levee and I'm sitting here looking at birds or. Just enjoying life, cooking, doing whatever I want to do.

Rachel: What's the wildest thing that's happened to you living out here?

Buddy: The most panicked I've ever been is I film my generator up with gas and it overran and I tried to start it and it was sitting on the porch over here and it caught on fire, and I'm sitting there saying, oh my God. All right, I got flames going up to the ceiling and my boat's parked, and I tried to throw it in the river and it ended up upside down in my boat, all right. Now I got a major flame and I mean, I mean a major fire. So I undo my boat and I push it off, and then it floats under my neighbor's camp over here. Alright, so then I had to dive in the water and go get the boat and push it back toward the woods, so that was the most traumatic experience I've had living here. You know, that's when I went and bought fire extinguishers.

Rachel: Tell me about nature out here.

Buddy: Oh, it's wild. You know, the wading birds and the cormorant and the eagles and the ospreys. We have 'em all now. There's a deer crossing swim in the river. Snakes, there's a lot of gators here, and they all like to swim in the water even when it's flooded. So I have to, I keep an eye out for 'em for the gators. I've never had a gator come up here, but I've had him swim back and forth in my yard looking at my dog on the porch and him be barking at them.

Rachel: Gators aren't what's been the problem for buddy. It's the raccoons.

Buddy: I was coming down the road and there was a, a coon in the, in the tree right here next to my mailbox. And when I got close, the coon jumped in the water and my dog went off the front of the boat. Well, this is in a split second the coon was standing on my dog's head, had my dog underwater, and if I hadn't got up there with a paddle and knocked the coon off, he'd have drowned my dog. And I ended up setting the trap, but then I felt bad I went out and pulled it up. I said well I ain't gonna do this, we all fighting the flood, you know, live and let live. We're all fighting the same battle. You know?

Rachel: Do you see the importance of, of other people learning about how you live?

Buddy: Well, if you stop and look at what happened in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, you might want to stop and think about living like this. Things have changed. The weather's changed. They have changed in my lifetime drastically.

Rachel: Why do you think you're the person who was like, I'm just gonna live here full time and I'm gonna make my house float.

Buddy: I don't know. You know, I have no idea. My friend Tommy, we were just talking about what we did, how our lives had played out. He's 80 as well as I am, and he is said, well, you took the road less traveled. I said, yeah, but it just happened to me. I'm normal. I don't consider myself a wild man that lives on the river. I don't consider myself different from other people, but it just happened and I'm glad it did happen. It was a good way to live my life.

It was peaceful after traveling the world, working in Manila and Caracas and these big cities, it's just, it brings me back to my childhood. I was raised on a dairy farm outside of Bunkie where nature was just nature. I mean, it was just part of us. And I get that same feeling here that I'm, I'm just part of nature out here, it's a nice feeling.

Rachel: ?Thank you for listening to this episode of No Matter the Water, which was produced by Rachel Nederveld and Associate Produced by Jillian Godshall
Production support and story editing by Laine Kaplan Levinson with editing help from Theo Balcomb
The sound engineers for this episode were Jill Godshall and Rachel Nederveld and Aaron Thomas did the Sound Design & Mix
Our music is by Richard Revue and Cover Art by MakeMade
Thanks so much to Jacques Lacour, Elizabeth English, our guest Buddy Blalock, and to everyone who has helped make this project possible
A special shout out to The Current for their support, especially Christiaan Mader and Johanna Divine
You can learn more about the topics in this episode and hear the rest of the series at nomatterthewater.com
Funding for this project has been provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, South Arts, Acadiana Center for the Arts, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Lafayette Economic Development Authority, the State of Louisiana, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and ArtSpark
No Matter the Water is a production of Ga De Don and The Current Media.