Last year as Memorial Day weekend arrived, I was making final frantic plans to attend my son Kyle’s wedding June 10.

I wouldn’t have believed anyone who told me that a year later, such an important anniversary would almost slip my mind as I began to dread the arrival of June and that other flood of memories.

During the last two weeks, loads of topsoil arrived at my house as yet another of my many flood-repair projects got under way. Within a month, as the anniversary of the flood arrives, I will have a lawn again and for that matter, so will many of my neighbors, who are also in the early stages of replacing topsoil and reseeding.

In my case, my tendency to procrastinate finally paid off. For the last several years, I had been contemplating having landscaping done. When I built my garage, we discovered gravel not far under the surface, indicating that at some point, East Brook may have meandered through what is now my backyard.

There wasn’t a lot of topsoil on that gravel. I had actually been ready to seek some estimates when East Brook found its way back to its old streambed, removing all the soil and depositing more rocks and gravel. I am so grateful that there wasn’t newly imported expensive topsoil there to wash away.

Almost a year after the fact, there is still a lot of work to do to bring Walton and the other flood-ravaged towns back to normal, but many people, myself included, were forced to replace or repair aging porches and make other repairs that have given many residential properties a face lift in the wake of the disaster.

___

Another type of memory surfaced recently when a group of Andes students announced the release of a 40-minute documentary "Shavertown _ Reservoir of Memories."

Students Cheyenne Tait, Carrianne Fairbairn, and Brittany McAdams worked with instructors Colleen Heavey and Wendy Redden to record the memories of 15 former residents of Shavertown.

The story about the film’s premiere at the State University College of Technology at Delhi brought memories of the lost village back to other people.

Karen Neff send an e-mail that said, "I read with interest about the young people putting on a production about Shavertown. My fourth-great-grandfather Jacob Shaver was part of the Shaver families that settled Shavertown.

"My great-grandfather James Henry and his wife, Charity Banks, were married in Union Grove, and some of my grandfather’s siblings were born in Arena. Give my congratulations to those young people. It is encouraging to know that there are some young people out there who are interested the history of some of our forgotten places and people.’’

Neff added that her fifth-great-grandfather Thomas Banks was given land in the Shavertown area as mustering out of pay from the Civil War.

Pauline Harrington sent an e-mail in which she mentioned that Clifford Harrington sawed the timber when they cleared the town. She added that he stayed with Herb Shaver and has some tales about a wonderful horse he owned that was used to skid logs.

The story also hit closer to home than I knew; when my mother read it, she told me that my grandfather was born in Shavertown.

___

Staff Writer Patricia Breakey covers Delaware County.