When it was over I found that other than flashlights
the only thing functioning electrically was my Walkman.
Even my fucking VHF took a bath,[my fault, oh woe!]
Yet as I considered the task of cleanup before me I was
pleasantly surprised to hear Handel through my earphones,
particularly excerpts from “The Messiah” and
“Largo from Xerxes”, left in the machine quite some time ago, must be my karma, ha ha!
Music definitely dispels gloom.
As you probably know, I live on an island. We all take our
chances wherever we live, personally I prefer hurricanes
over tornados, at least they let you know their coming.
That said, the storm is one thing, it comes it goes and I
can speak to that, however it is the aftermath that will
be more enduring in my mind.
But to begin with I chose to stay. Why not?, I pride myself
on my stupidity. As I buttoned the place up I plotted the
center of the storm and came to the conclusion it would
go South and then West of me, which it did at a distance
of seventy miles or so, arc-ing to the North.
Struck me winds were a steady eighty with gusts to
one hundred out of Northeast to East for quite some
time, then as the storm circled past me the wind clocked
to Southwest to West and slowly abated.
I observed events from the house next door, they had
elevation. The owners had departed, offering me their
place to stay as my house sits about five feet
above normal sea level.
Their house has shutterless windows designed to withstand
150 mph. winds, so I could clearly see to all quadrants
and what a sight it was.
Sure as hell my house flooded clean through.
Yet as I go through the process I am discovering
that much of what has been destroyed is absolute
fucking minutiae and it took a storm called
Irma to wake me up to that fact.
Islander.
Ps. My wife chose to ride it out up in Avon Park
and the fucking storm came right over her, ha-ha!