CHILLICOTHE, Mo. — Carl Howe didn’t worry about flooding when he bought a concrete building and made it his home several years ago. His thoughts were on tornadoes then.

“That basement was 18 inches thick. Ain’t no way tornado coulda blown that thing over,” he said.

At first he bought the former concrete plant office building for his sister to use as a beauty parlor. That didn’t work out.

“So I thought ‘well this be good a place as any’ so I went inside, insulated everything, fixed it up and make me a decent little apartment,” the 72-year-old Chillicothe man said.

Mr. Howe wasn’t so sure about what to call home as he stood at the edge of floodwaters in rubber wading boots, watching frogs splash in the muddy waters surrounding his house Friday morning. Water covered mailboxes and rose up to the top of street signs marking Fifth and Keith avenues. The classic 1986 Oldsmobile Toronado that rode “better than a Cadillac” sat waterlogged in his driveway. He was going to restore it someday.

He said he’s lived there long enough to see three 100-year floods. But four floods in four months was too much.

“I’ll clean it up, paint it up, put a for sale sign on it and let it go,” he said of his house. “Somebody’ll want it, but I fought it too long.”

Grand River floodwaters closed roads and spilled into low-lying homes in scattered parts of this Northwest Missouri town earlier this week. Officials reopened U.S. Highway 36 Friday afternoon as the waters began to recede. But in cruel irony, billboards advertising the Duck Club, the Grand River Inn and Chris Trout State Farm Insurance still beckoned from watery roadsides.

Rhonda Coin, a convenience store clerk who lives in a small town nearby, said this flood was just as bad as it was in 1993 for some people.

“Oh it’s not too bad now, but when the highway closed lots of people didn’t make it in to work and stuff,” she said.

On high ground no one would have known a flood was still in town. Traffic flowed as usually down U.S. Highway 65. McDonald’s and Pizza Hut parking lots were full at lunchtime.

Floodwaters loitered in low lying areas — missing some houses but making calls on others.

Shirley Keith held a garage sale Friday right around the corner from a family trapped in their home for three days by water. After 51 years living in the same house, Ms. Keith has decided it’s time to move out. But floodwaters didn’t chase her away. She got tired of mowing grass and is moving into a retirement home where somebody takes care of all that. The floodwaters never bothered her like they did her neighbors.

“I never had it in my house,” she said. “It’s gotten at the very back of the lot one time, well a couple times, but I was never bothered with floods.”

The man of the house with the family trapped in by floodwaters paced worriedly around outside on his deck. Mr. Howe, the man’s next door neighbor, said Mennonites helped the man build his house higher off the ground a few years ago. It was high enough to keep everything dry but not enough to drive away. They’ve been inside for three days now but Mr. Howe said he thinks they have enough to eat.

“I think they probably have enough to get by,” he said. “He’s walking around there like a nervous cat. I bet he’ll make 500 trips around there today.”

Alonzo Weston can be reached

at alonzow@npgco.com.