Riding It Out

The summer of ’77, I drove our yellow VW Variant south to Florida from Chicago.  I was transporting household goods to our new St Pete home. Bingo, our handsome but intellectually short-changed Brittany Spaniel, was in the back seat. There was no air conditioning. By the time we crossed the Florida border on I-75, I had cranked all the windows down. I felt wet spatters on my cheek. I peered through in the windshield for clouds. I turned. Bingo’s head was happily lolling out of the window behind me, mouth open, slobbering.

I was not thinking about hurricanes back then. I anticipated life in our new home in St. Petersburg’s Old Northeast: warm days under the oaks, visits to Pass-a-Grille beach – no ice, no month-long freeze, a la Chicago. Hurricanes were abstract notions. They existed only on the TV screen, like All in the Family. Nearly 150 Florida hurricanes, three evacuations and one water-logged Toyota later, we found they are real. They focus you like a wet mullet upside the head.

When the weather person on TV first announces a tropical disturbance, gesturing at a paramecium-like blob loitering south of the Dominican Republic, My Life’s Editor and I shrug our shoulders, unimpressed. As the blob oozes northward and then pounces on Cuba, we begin paying more attention. We keep the TV on the weather channel, stopping to get updates as we walk by with a basket of clothes from the dryer. Friends and family from other states call: “Aren’t you worried?” Showing Florida cool, we say, “Nah.” Like soldiers in combat, we figure the other guy is going to get hit, not us.

When the Vanna White look-alike reporter gestures at a probable storm path and the arrow curves our way, we perk up. Hmm, we think. We look under a stack of papers in our office for the Tampa Bay Times special Hurricane Edition but can’t find it. What did we do with the Coleman lamps and the flashlights? I find them in a box in our storage locker, under a suitcase and an Igloo cooler. The batteries are dead. Two bottles of water sit alone on the laundry room shelf. Time to head for Publix and CVS. There are ugly scenes by the water aisle in Publix. Elderly retirees are elbowed aside in the scuffle for the last few cases of Dasani. Carts heaped with water, batteries, and toilet paper, shoppers wheel out of the store. They contemplate mid-storm visits to the pooper, aided by flashlights.

When the weather person utters the National Weather Service’s first official scary word – Hurricane Watch – it is time to fish or cut bait. Should we light out for motel-intensive Orlando? If we wait to leave town until the next even more scary word is announced – Hurricane Advisory – we may join carloads of cranky people, crawling along, nose to tail, on I-75 or I-10. Since Florida’s laws are big on self-defense and encourage personal weaponry, there may be gun play before we hit the outskirts of Tampa. On the one occasion My Life’s Editor and I split for Orlando, the storm followed us there, saying, “Not so fast, pilgrim.”

A Hurricane Warning is the ultimate scary word. The weather person invoking a Hurricane Warning is like my mother saying, “You just wait until your father gets home!” Waiting in my room, listening for the thump, thump of my father’s feet on the stairs, was like our waiting for Helene or Milton to come smite us. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Like me back then, we know we are going to catch hell, totally undeserved.

A Warning means the government wants you to skedaddle if you live in a low-lying area. On reflection, that describes Florida. If we had any sense, we would have left the place to the alligators, the swamp angels, and the Seminoles, just coming down to enjoy their casinos. We would restrict residential construction to chickees. They are the ultimate organic home, require no air conditioning, and are easily rebuilt, what with all the palm fronds lying about after a hurricane.

For Hurricane Helene, we hunkered down in our condo, behind our double-paned, 120 mph-proof windows. Unable to get through them, Helene had a hissy fit, went around to our balcony and shrieked through the sliding doors, the highest decibel level we had ever experienced, excepting a girls’ volleyball tournament. Right behind Helene stood Milton, patiently waiting for the floods to subside before delivering a right hook to Tampa Bay. Nothing personal about it, we were just in the way.

My Life’s Editor did not feel like cowering in the condo for Hurricane Milton. She envisioned the power going out and the possibility of trudging up and down 21 flights of stairs by flashlight. Fortunately, pals living in an evacuation-exempt zone near our condo fled farther north and left their home to us. The “us” included three other adults, a ten-year-old boy and a cat. We awaited the storm with trepidation.

Things were not so happy around 2 AM when the storm came calling. There were many whumps and thuds. What was that? Did you hear it? My Life’s Editor and I lay abed, peering over our drawn-up sheets. Then I had to pee. Peeing in a strange house at night is fraught with concerns. I thought about my cousin, in a strange house, who fell down a flight of stairs on a midnight peeing mission. Where was the bathroom? There, over to the left, the door to the loo. I stubbed my toe on the door jamb. Many bad words.

Bleary-eyed, we all gathered in the kitchen in the early AM, survivors. We scrounged through bags of food brought from home. Where was the peanut butter? Did you bring it? Forgot the jam. Do you suppose they have some? Where do they keep it? Can you find the glasses and cups? How does this coffee machine work? Then, catastrophe – no internet! We were incommunicado.  I dove into my hurricane box of lamps and flashlights and produced an artifact from the 1950s – a transistor radio.

The mayor announced that we would be without water. Pumping stations had wheezed to a stop. We looked at each other. Did that mean that once flushed, our commodes would be non-flushing? Precisely so. The home remedy to deal with the problem: plastic bags and kitty litter. Some readers may be squeamish, so I will not explain further, other than to say that I did a capital job of cutting out bags to fit over the loos, with a little duct tape.

Like Noah, peering out from his ark perched on Mt. Ararat, we opened the front door to a disaster. Milton had taken a galactic weed-whacker to St. Pete. Lawns were a jumble sale of home goods and uprooted trees and shrubs. We got dressed and tentatively explored the neighborhood, stepping around debris. It struck us that we were among the happy few who had power – a generator rumbled in our back yard. We saw neighbors stumbling out of their dark homes like zombies on Night of the Living Dead. They looked at us. Was that a glare? Did they have generator envy?

The adults and the ten-year-old gathered in the kitchen to share a cup of coffee and an appropriate soft drink. We clinked mugs, congratulated ourselves for riding it out, for our good fortune, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”