CANTON, Texas — Last week’s rain bought flash flooding across East Texas, including at the site of the Canton’s First Monday Trade Days.
If you went out to the Tae Days Saturday, you wouldn’t have known the entire grounds were under water. Vendors are back to their routine, but not without some setbacks.
“It was definitely thousands and thousands of dollars," said Tim Babcock, co-owner of Twigs Home and Lighting.
Canton’s First Monday Trade Days is in full operation for the season despite the damages caused by the heavy rain and flooding.
"People are here shopping and some people have no idea what just happened," said Babcock.
Many stores suffered losses due to the flooding on August 22.
"Everything you see here was under water, " said Babock. "There was just mud and silt and what had been floating. [It] was just so much loss."
Babcock sells home décor, furniture, lighting and anything you can think of for your home, but when he walked into his store on August 22, "everything was under water and so I came into the store. Everything was just floating it was a disaster basically."
Scars of the flooding remain inside his store.
"We still have mud marks and things that we haven’t cleaned up but you can tell that water was up really really high," said Babcock. "The debris was in the store so all of that was caught in the grids so we still have to clean that up."
This wasn't first time the grounds have been flooded, but Babcock says it’s the customers that go through his store that make it all worth staying.
"We just go on. Customers look forward to coming and it’s something we do because we love what we do." said Babcock.
Unfortunately, Babcock doesn’t have insurance for his business since the First Monday trade days is located in a flood plain, but he did tell me that he had people reach out trying to buy what was salvageable from the flood.