When the levee broke June 12, the owners, Mick Crumpton and his wife, Brenda, were actually as well prepared for the flood as they possibly could be.
“At 2 o’clock on Thursday, a firefighter came in and said it might break,” Nemmers said. “It took five hours to clear the store out of everything that could be moved.”
This logistical victory came about because Brenda Crumpton came over from Manchester and her brother came from Monticello in pickups towing flatbed trailers. All of the tables and seating were moved out, followed by the ovens, soda machine and other prep appliances.
“I called several of my employees that day, and they were the ones carrying things out,” Nemmers said. “They were all very willing to help. It was wonderful.”
Some things couldn’t be moved, like the store’s walk-in freezer and cooler, but if it wasn’t nailed down, it was taken out. The Crumptons knew the drill; they’d done it all before in 1999 when flooding threatened.
“We got everything out before the flood hit, our ovens, our tables, all of our product,” Nemmers said. After everything was out, they made sandwiches for the store’s workers, the sandbaggers still in the area and for people filling sandbags at the Lawrence Community Center.
While the Crumptons were feeding community volunteers, they were benefiting themselves from the spirit of community cooperation. Wal-Mart provided them with space in its freezers and coolers for all of the store’s product, which they later were able to redistribute to the three other Subway shops they own.
The levee broke, and the water poured in. Eventually it left, and when it did, Mick and Brenda went back in to check the damage.
“He was afraid of a lot of structural damage,” Nemmers said, “but once he got in here, he found it wasn’t so bad. Once he found that out, they started the cleanup.”
“We were very appreciative of all the help we had, and I told Beth to let the customers know when they came back in how much we appreciate it,” Brenda Crumpton said. “We were hit pretty hard, but we also know there were many people who suffered way worse than we did. We consider ourselves lucky.”
Nemmers said the Crumptons and their two kids, Hannah, 14, and Noah, 9, did most of the cleanup, starting with pushing the river mud out and cleaning the floors, along with help from some of the volunteers from Tapken’s, which owns the building. After that, everything up to about four feet above the floor was replaced, with the walls being cut out and replaced to prevent mold growing inside them.
“We took a financial hit,” Brenda said. “We lost June and July, our two biggest months of the year. But the Bowerses (Don and Vicky, owners of the building) were great about moving quickly and moving fast to get the store ready to reopen. They’ve been great.”
New wallpaper went up, which like so many other things, had to meet the specifications of the Subway home office. There was a delay in reopening from having to wait on new equipment, like the freezer and cooler, which took five to six weeks to arrive after ordering.
The biggest delay came in waiting for the new bain-Marie, the serving line equipment that holds all the meats and condiments from which the sandwiches are made. Once it was installed, the Crumptons only had to wait for delivery of product, a final cleaning, and the go-ahead from the Jones County Sanitarian; the store finally reopened Aug. 14.