NATCHEZ — With the clarity gained from nearly nine months of life after the Great Mississippi River Flood of 2011, a few key players in the flood fight shared their stories Saturday at the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.

During the frenzied focus on preparation last summer, some of the situations relayed by J.M. Jones Lumber owner Lee Jones might not have garnered laughs at the time, but they did Saturday.

Jones — who is among a 100-year-old family lineage of owners of the sawmill — said he grew up loving the Mississippi River. But by now, he’s over it.

“I spent time on the tugboats (as a child),” he said. “But since 2005, I hate the river. I want it to dry up and grow trees,” he half joked.

In preparation for last year’s flood, J.M. Jones employees worked around the clock to supplement the existing levees to fight a river crest, which at one time, was predicted to be a 65-foot crest. The river ultimately crested at a record 61.95 feet.

Jones said he watched his grandson lean over the end of a crane at the river’s edge to drop sandbags on the man-made levee, as waves made by tugboats pushing against a 20 mile-per-hour current ate at the levee’s base.

“I made him wear a life jacket,” he said.

And when national news stations brought their cameras to set up shop at the operation, Jones indulged them even though he suspected voyeuristic motives.

“They wanted to get the big scoop when (the levee failed) and we all drowned, I guess,” Jones said.

Jones, 73, said he’s lived through three 100-year floods, one 500-year flood and one 1,000-year flood.

He talked more about his experience and the people he met during the flood fury, including his “mole in the (U.S Army) Corps (of Engineers,” the “arrogant, ridiculous squirt” U.S. Coast Guard official who pretended to be on his cell phone whenever Jones approached him and the CNN guys who apparently told Jones’ wife, Sherry, “We decided you were a real dish in your day.”

“We were doing something that was just impossible,” Jones said of the jerry-rigged defense against the waters, efforts which ended up saving the business.

“We had many guardian angels.”

Following City Engineer David Gardner’s presentation, which gave the audiences a look at the new software that mapped areas threatened by floodwaters, Louis Guedon, a local farmer and owner of Louis Guedon Farms and Church Hill Produce, spoke about his own flood measurement tactics.

“I always carry a pistol,” Guedon started.

And for every flood in the past 40 years, Guedon has shot a bullet in a barn on his property at the waterline.

A number of dates have been penned next to each bullet hole, with the “2011” hole at a distance so high he said he has to lean back his head to see it and duck in his boat to enter the barn for the shot.

Guedon also talked about the inevitable struggle of farming near the Mississippi River, especially last year.

“(Last) year we had a drought and a flood at the same time,” he said.

Guedon said he once asked his father how he dealt with the flooding time and time again.

“You gotta learn how to fish and plant a cotton crop on the same land, son,” Guedon repeated.

Natchez-Adams County Port Director Anthony Hauer spoke about the theme of the program, titled “Man against nature: up close and personal with the Great Mississippi River Flood of 2011.”

“As long as the river is being interfered with by man with their controls, we will always have a flooding problem,” Hauer said.

Hauer said growing up as a “river rat,” and making his living off the river at the port has taught him, most of all, about patience.

He said he had one answer to the worried tenants of the industrial park to the question about how they would beat the river.

“Patience, accuracy and confidence,” Hauer said.