Susquehanna slammed businesses along its path

As he did his best to wash the mud from a table outside his home and former business, Button's Auction Barn on Lovers Lane in Great Bend, Mr. Button said afterwards 2006 he decided to put away his auctioneer's gavel for good.

"This time I had nothing," Mr. Button said inside the dairy barn he converted to an auction hall for 22 years - "my palace," he called it. What was left of the used furniture and farm supplies he had accrued in the auction business was housed in another of the five barns on his 34-acre property.