CLARKSVILLE, MO. — Up and down the streets of this historic river town, they know her as "The Purple Lady."

Her entire house, the one at 112 Main Cross where she has lived for more than half a century, is painted a brilliant purple. The Christmas tree that stands year-round in the corner of the living room sparkles with purple decorations.

Even Bootsie Duvall's dress on this sun-baked June afternoon -- from the sunglass frames perched atop a cloud of white hair, past her matching short set, right down to her shoes -- is the same vivid shade of shocking, passionate purple.

But it is another color that has Duvall's attention this week:

Brown.

As in Mississippi River water brown, as in the ugly caramel brown of the floodwater that has been creeping closer and closer to her beloved home.

"We started to move out," she said. "We were ready to load everything into the U-Haul and take it away. But then we stopped and started putting it all up on concrete blocks.

"And now, now we're just waiting."

All along the mighty Mississippi this week, in towns from the Iowa border south to the Missouri River, the battle with the Great Flood of 2008 has been pitched and desperate.

For some the fight was lost days ago, as water spilled over and through levees and makeshift sandbag barricades and poured into homes and businesses and inundated farmland.

Here in Clarksville, the water has already taken the city park and the railroad tracks. A smattering of homes and outbuildings have become islands, accessible now only by rowboat. 

The floodwater has encircled the Clarksville Christian Church, where on Thursday afternoon a lone man sat just outside the front door surveying the scene.

But the news for much of the town of 490 has been better, at least for now.

Thanks to help from hundreds of volunteers and Army National Guard soldiers who have descended on town, residents have going toe to toe with the forces of nature.

And so far, at least for the most part, they appear to be winning.

Buying Time

Tim Booth took a job with LaCrosse Lumber Co. here in the autumn of 1993, not long after the Big Flood poured into downtown and into the building that has stood here more than 70 years.

"It was a huge loss," said Booth, now the company's assistant manager, talking of that record flood. "There was $50,000 to $60,000, just in remodeling work, not counting the loss of hardware and lumber."

Booth and the company's manager, Melinda St. Clair, have been leading a team of volunteers that by Thursday afternoon had built a sandbag wall some 9 feet high and 20-feet wide between the business and the river.

Every few minutes on Thursday, St. Clair scrambled up the top of the wall and looked over at the water -- still rising -- just two feet below the top of the bags.

Last weekend, when projections were calling for this flood to crest even higher than the flood of '93, St. Clair worked 36 hours straight on the wall, to the point of exhaustion.

Recent news has been better. Levee breaches both north and south have revised crest levels for Clarksville downward.

"My heart goes out to those people," she said of those who have lost property to the flood. "But I'm thankful that it at least has relieved some of the pressure from us."

Said Booth: "It buys you time."

Mike Russell, the city's emergency management coordinator, said on Thursday afternoon the crest was anticipated to be at 37 feet, seven inches. But by Friday the National Weather Service had moved the estimate even lower: to 36.6 feet on Monday.

If Clarksville hits that mark, it would be just 11 inches from the record July 1993 crest of 37.5 feet.

"My legs, my feet, my mind--everything is tired," St. Clair said.

"I go to sleep," Booth said, "and I'm still throwing sandbags in my sleep."

Good Kids

Jane Woods of Bowling Green -- a former first grade teacher, Rotarian and executive director of the Pike County Memorial Hospital Foundation -- said she first drove to Clarksville on Monday to offer her help. She arrives around 9:30 each morning and usually stays until dark, spending most of the time helping fill sandbags.

Woods, 64, said she was so sore from sitting at the end of the first day that she could scarcely tolerate the pain. Still, she says, it has been worth it.

"It's what I do," she said. "I'll be here tomorrow and the day after that, until it crests."

Throughout the week too, a contingent of volunteers from Troy High School's Future Farmers of America have made the trip to Clarksville, assisting with the sandbagging.

Advisor Matt McCrory calls the students "awesome kids who just want to do what they can."

"When I saw on TV what was happening, I thought this was the right thing to do," said Kaity Eversmeyer, 17, who will be a senior at the school this fall.

On Thursday, about a dozen of the FFA students lunched on pork roast, ranch beans, watermelon and lemonade -- a thank-you from the family of Sue and Oz Osborne for helping save their home from the water.

"We never would have got the wall done in time without them," said Sue Osborne, the Osborne's daughter-in-law who hosted the picnic gathering. "That house had 1 feet of water in there in '93," she said. "It's bone dry now and we think it will stay that way.

"People need to know there are good kids out there," she said, "and these kids are the best there are."

Touching the Mississippi

Throughout the week tractors crawled over the downtown streets, scooping up loads of sand and carrying it to staging areas. The chatter of shoppers has given way to the roar of generators and water pumps amid the closed antique shops and other businesses that line First and Howard streets.

TV satellite trucks stretched up Second Street; golf carts filled with bottles of cool drinking water scooted among the old houses.

At the Carroll House Bed & Breakfast, owner Kim Hoffmeyer said everything that could be done was being done.

Hoffmeyer, who bought the 130-year-old former stage coach stop just three years ago, said he knows that outsiders probably don't understand what keeps the people of Clarksville here -- so close to the river and so close to potential disaster.

To understand them, Hoffmeyer says, is to understand the history of the place.

"This town wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for the river," he said. "Did you know the first paper mill in Missouri was right here, that this was the site of the first motor car built in Missouri? We used to make vinegar to import to Europe. This was a site of the bicycle races for the St. Louis World's Fair."

To pick up and move, he said, would be tantamount to abandoning the city's past.

"If we lose this, we lose a part of ourselves," he said.

The city's motto, carved into an archway overlooking downtown: "Clarksville. Touch the Mississippi."

"I first came here on my motorcycle years ago," he said. "And I fell in love with this place."

"I made my wish"

Up at the top of the hill, just outside the Clarksville Inn, the yellow schoolbus had arrived again, dropping off National Guard soldiers in their drab olive for the start of yet another shift. More than 130 men and women in all -- from the 1138th Transportation unit and the 1035th Support Maintenance Co. from Jefferson Barracks -- have been here most of the week.

"If it hadn't been for everybody out here working together, we would have lost this town, or at least a good part of it," said Jack Acord, Sgt. 1st Class with the 1138th.

"Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, men and women from the prisons, people from all over," said Duvall, the Purple Lady.

Duvall has moved her prize pig collection to high ground inside her home; the legs of her piano stand on blocks, ready for the water she hopes will never come.

In a hallway, there are holes in the wall where she has taken away a single row of family photographs -- the one closest to the floor.

She packed away her best china earlier in the week and closed it up in a suitcase that sat Thursday atop the arms of an antique hall tree five feet off the ground.

Outside, the sandbags were in place.

On Wednesday, the family celebrated the birthday of Duvall's daughter, Debra Peppers who arrived from south St. Louis County earlier in the week. Duvall didn't have the time to bake the usual birthday cake; the family substituted a white coconut snack cake instead, with a single candle.

"I blew it out and I made my wish," Peppers said.

"I wished for the water to go down."