Former Pinhook residents watch as bulldozers level what's left of the town the 2011 flood destroyed

The Robinsons of Pinhook, Missouri, gathered for lunch Thursday afternoon at their regular spot, Vine's Custom Meats near East Prairie, Missouri.

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com A trophy sits inside a vacant Pinhook, Missouri, home Thursday. Pinhook was ravaged by floodwater in 2011 when the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers breached the Bird's Point Levee in Mississippi County, Missouri, to help relieve the swollen Mississippi River. Demolition of the remaining structures in Pinhook began Thursday. (Laura Simon)

Aretha Robinson sat quietly at the head of one table with her daughters LaToya Robinson-Tate and Debra Tarver, both grown now and compulsive huggers. Brothers David and Reginald sat at another table, laughing with some other locals.

They seemed in good spirits, considering 10 miles to the southeast, a bulldozer was knocking down what little was left of the town four generations of Robinsons had called home.

More than four years after a historic flood devastated the town of roughly three dozen residents, the last of the buildings were demolished. The half-dozen former residents who came to watch Thursday morning already had tried to come to grips with the loss, focusing instead on rebuilding elsewhere, but they could not have prepared themselves for the finality of the scene.

"I started crying when I was about four or five miles away from Pinhook," Robinson-Tate said, pausing to weather another pang of heartache. "Thinking about it not ever being a home again."

But once she arrived, the tears subsided.

"Once I was with my family, then it was better," she said.

It reminded her the residents themselves always have been the heart of the Pinhook community -- not the houses.

"It's a sad day," she said. "But God is allowing us to close this chapter and open another one. That's what we got. When we need support, here it comes."

From left, LaToya Robinson-Tate, Gloria Merriweather, Debra Tarver, Leonard Gallion, Reginald Robinson, Aretha Robinson and David Robinson gather together for a group photo as demolition of the remaining homes in Pinhook begins, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015. Pinhook was ravaged by floodwater in 2011 when the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers breached the Birds Point Levee in Mississippi County to help relieve the swollen Mississippi River. (Laura Simon)

Over lunch, Tarver's smile evaporated when she tried to explain the emotions of the day.

She made an effort to laugh it off, but the air just went out of her.

She served as chairwoman of Pinhook before the flood and has spent the past four years trying to rebuild and hold her community together. It has been utterly exhausting.

"We're just churchgoing people. We don't want a lot of hoopla," Tarver said. "It'll be okay. It'll work out."

Tarver, like her siblings, didn't want to talk about the past.

From left, Gloria Merriweather, Aretha Robinson, Reginald Robinson, Leonard Gallion and David Robinson gather together as demolition of the remaining homes in Pinhook begins Thursday. (Laura Simon)

Not Thursday. It would have been too painful.

Her family's history in Pinhook goes back to 1937, when her grandfather Jim Robinson was part of its settling.

She and her siblings were taught more than morals growing up; they learned the town's history from the lips of those who saw it firsthand.

Pinhook's founders weren't choosy, she said. They couldn't afford to be.

Instead, they were unpretentious and hard-working. Rather than complain about the poor-quality farmland, they worked -- and prayed -- harder until it bore crops.

Rather than cursing the floodwaters that repeatedly menaced their livelihoods, Jim Robinson Jr. petitioned for improved flood protection.

Reginald Robinson remembered his father working with Kit Bond and Jo Ann Emerson.

"He spoke before Congress when it was flooding back in the '70s," he said.

But Pinhook always has been in a floodplain, and in 2011, it found itself on the wrong side of the crisis-management equation. To save Cairo, Illinois, and other populated areas upriver, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew the Bird's Point Levee, leaving the floodplain -- and Pinhook -- under water.

"We'd been in floods before," Reginald said. "Four times, we went through the floods. We built it up to where we knew the water would never come."

But that year was different, he said. He pointed up to a picture on the wall for perspective. Framed photography from the flood of 2011 hung on the restaurant's wall.

"Look how many acres of property that flooded," he said, shaking his head at the muddy panorama. "That's a pretty serious picture there."

After lunch, the Robinsons returned to Pinhook.

The bulldozer still was crawling over one brick-strewn lot.

The house that had stood there was a splintered heap.

The lot next door at one point had belonged to one of Aretha Robinson's sisters but had been torn down when she died and now was nothing but overgrown. Beside that, the next in the bulldozer's path was a baby-blue ranch-style home with a sunken wall and not many windows.

Inside, five and a half feet high, an ugly brown stain ringed the walls where the water had crested.

A thick crust covered the hardwood where the black floodwater silt had settled, dried and cracked like the desert floor. But Reginald found fond memories in the house still.

Reginald Robinson looks over one of several trophies laying inside his cousin's vacant Pinhook, Missouri, home Thursday. (Laura Simon)

"She went to nationals for cheerleading," Reginald said of a relative, plucking a broken trophy from a broken trophy case. "This was my cousin's house, George Williams. He was our bus driver for near 40 years."

But as they had in the face of flooding, the Robinsons retained a staggering optimism in the face of the tearing down.

There were heartache and tears, but no bitterness -- only hope and good humor.

"Bitter won't build you a house," LaToya said. "We were raised like that. We're going to be fine. We're going to get through it. I just never thought it would be so hard to find 25 acres of land outside the floodplain."

Because, she said, the people are Pinhook. That's just how much they're looking for to rebuild.

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627

Pertinent address:

Pinhook, Mo.