"I survived Hurricane Hugo," but my parents wouldn't buy me the t-shirt to prove it. With Irene supposedly approaching, I can’t stop thinking back to Sept. 22, 1989 when the eye of Hurricane Hugo hit Charlotte, NC (just 20 minutes from my childhood home) & wondering if any preparations should to be made for Irene's potential visit to my home this weekend.
My Dad came home from work early that day - something he never does, even to this day as a 69-year old hard working man - and he flipped off our MTV & tuned into Bill Walker on WSOC-TV. Then, he proceeded to put massive duct tape X's over all of the big windows in our house. My sister, Cheri (then 17) and I (then 11 - wow!) were beyond mortified and begging him to stop, because "the neighbors can see, Dad!" Naturally we just wanted our MTV.
My Mom & brother, Charles, took a seat by the TV and for the remainder of the evening we listened to meteorologists claim that Hugo's eye wouldn't come near us and that the most we'd experience would be minimal tropical storm conditions. "Dad, really, duct tape? How are you going to clean that off?" No one predicted that we kids would be out of school for two weeks doing manual labor to restore our yards, that we'd have no warm water or power for those two weeks, that businesses would shut down for months, that ice would be an insane $10/bag, gas would be $5+/gallon, chainsaws would be sold for 3x their value, and that we would be subjected to dinners of potatoes tossed into the fire that was burning the nearly dozen trees that fell on my parents lot. No one expected how bad it would devastate our small town of Monroe, NC at the heart of Union County.
Flash back to more complaining from my sister and me as my parents gather candles, flashlights, and extra batteries for my beloved lavender boom box "just in case." I can't quite recall the series of events that sandwiched us all in our first floor hallway in the middle of that horrible night with blankets, pillows, & our ears fixated on the ferocious winds howling through the air vents which we could also feel gusting in and the last scrambled words on my boom box before towers failed & we lost my boom box -- "It's here!" I definitely do recall how LOnnnnnnnnnG that night was, how wretched 99 mph winds sound, the pops of shingles flying off our roof, the grumblings of our house's poor frame, the splits & kerplunks of trees, & how unsettling it felt to not know how bad it really was outside - "Kids, stay away from the windows!" We barley slept, and we spent the whole night anxiously huddled in that 12 ft. hall.
When my Dad finally deemed it safe to leave the hall - basically in the wee hours of the morning - he opened the front door & before stepping out into what looked like a wasteland of green, through his hands which had covered his mouth in reflex to what he was seeing he muttered, "Dear, God..." Fallen trees, limbs, odd pieces of housing materials, including insulation, my Mom's beloved pear tree was barely uprooted but standing completely sideways, more fallen trees, and our neighbor, Sam, the most deep voiced, manly sounding man on the street, was in his backyard nearly sobbing as a tree had hit his man cave of an out building. Choice curse words intertwined with the various names of our Maker were being used as he shouted to my Dad who couldn't see Sam, due to all of the tree tops now in the way of the path between our two yards. We even found pears on the opposite side of our two acres.
My friend's yard across the street lost its biggest oak, and its top branch was ever so graciously touching their living room window and leaving it & her family unharmed. I called Laurie (yes, miraculously the phones worked) to make sure she was okay, and lo & behold I woke her family up, "Have you looked out your window?" She replied, "No, why?" "WHAT?!?! How did you sleep through that?" Her father and brother wasted no time arming themselves with chainsaws and getting to work and when they were done in their yard a few days later they did one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for our family and made their way to ours. Thank you, Larry & Jeff for helping us to reclaim a yard we could see through. It had to be done; the clean-up had to take place, and we were in for days of some tough manual labor.
Cheri's new spiral perm (those were still en vogue at the time) smelled nice and ripe as there was no hot water to properly wash it the first time. Thankfully the other preparation my Dad did was fill the bathtubs with water; you need that to flush your toilets, especially the temperamental one in my bathroom. Dead birds were found here and there in the yard, and the bees weren't happy with our clean-up efforts. They were everywhere, and so was smoke from the hundreds of fires being set to burn down the fallen trees. Our yard had two LARGE fires going for at least a week. We'd drag and carry limbs, cross sectioned trunks, etc. to the fires all day. I remember my collecting of acorns wasn't very impressive or necessary. Our neighborhood, properly called "White Oaks" was a mess. I'd venture to say that at least 1/3 of our one mile loop of white oaks were down, and they had taken over the street. Very fortunately, one neighbor, Arnold, owned an auto body repair shop, and he used his tow truck to pull the trees to the side of the road. He said he stopped counting after he had moved thirty, but he had to get to work & help others get to work. You bet some autos needed repairing thanks to Hugo.
As soon as my family and I could get out of our yard & take a break from our work to take a walk, we quickly realized how very lucky we were compared to others who lost roofs, cars, and windows (no duct tape on their's I guess...). As soon as my brother, a Harris Teeter bag boy working his way through Wingate College at the time, was able to drive his Ford Escort out of our neighborhood he did. He made it to work in more than double time, and you would have thought he brought my mother gold when he came home with a banana box full of coveted ice that the Manager was kind enough to secretly bestow upon each employee. All my Mom wanted to do was salvage some of our food now rotting in the fridge; I remember her sort of crying as she tossed out a freezer full of meals and meats. Thankfully she had that 10 lb. bag of potatoes that we literally wrapped in foil and tossed in with the trees. It would take about an hour to cook one, and to this day I've never had a baked potato that tasted so good. Maybe I was hungry, maybe it’s my Irish heritage, or maybe wood smoke makes all things better?! We were out of charcoal for our grill, so we threw wood in that, too. I can't remember eating anything other than those potatoes for days, but certainly there were dry foods in the pantry we munched on.
With my parents and brother finally back to work with drives much longer than normal, they came home with more stories of destruction and an even greater appreciation for what our house had survived. The only trees that fell close to our home were a beautiful set of white oaks that looked like two fused together in an embrace, my favorite trees in our yard. When they fell their embrace was shattered, and their limbs cautiously laid atop our carport. We were LUCKY.
Thanks to GA Power making the hike to NC, our electricity was restored 14 days after that awful night. At school everyone looked rough but hopeful. I remember being envious of those with "I survived Hurricane Hugo" t-shirts; seeing the red eye in the center of their shirts coming towards me in the hall only added to depth of green in my eyes. Those shirts were cool. As a sixth grader, you might imagine that the stories I had heard were embellished or that my memory of my own stories is embellished, but I assure you they weren't. There's no way to describe what went through my head that night and the next day when my eyes took it all in, and there's no proper way to document my memories. So, I'm hoping that this "story" - the one I've told here - will do just that.
I tried sharing some of what I experienced during Hugo with my 5 year old son, Gabe, last night. I found myself being very selective as I didn't want to make him any more nervous about Hurricane Irene who is supposedly coming "near" us tomorrow. He has such a big heart and is such a worry wart. One of our neighbors lovingly nicknamed him "Mr. Safety." He keeps asking about Irene and wants to know when she's coming and how windy she will be. He says that trees may come down near our house. God, I hope not, because I'm looking at the biggest oak that looms over our back porch right now, and it looks a little top heavy. My three year old daughter, Abbey, could care less as she wrangles herself out of her cowgirl costume and demands that I assist her with her Supergirl transformation.
I pray the meteorologists are right when they say that we will experience tropical storm like winds of 30-40 mph. I pray that the 1/2 bathroom is the safest place for my husband, kids, stinky, old dog, and I to bunker down in when and if Irene's eye comes anywhere near our humble town of Clayton, NC. After writing down this recollection, I have deemed that "making preparations" isn't a waste of time, and it's not something to be laughed at or taken lightly. I will buy batteries and decent flashlights, maybe even a camping lantern. I will gas up my car in anticipation of sky rocketing post-Hurricane prices. Dare I buy spare duct tape?
I may even put a bag of ice in our freezer, so I won't have to pay the 80% mark up if Irene tries to take my frozen veggies & meats, and you bet my husband will fill our tubs with water. He's done that before when tornadoes have visited our area. He's suggested bringing down our son's mattress and adding it to our already claustrophobia-inducing 1/2 bath so we can cover ourselves should the roof blow off, etc. He's good like that, although always the eternal optimist. He trusts the meteorologists on this, while some might accuse me of getting my panties in a wad. Maybe my glass is sometimes half empty, but this wad is heading to Walmart like the other wads that don't trust Irene. This wad isn’t planning on leaving town. This wad is riding it out, maybe even on a mattress...Lord, I hope not. |
