THE BACK DOOR HURRICANE OF 99

　
Here I am again in the midst of the most stressful time of year. The heart of hurricane season. The same yearly issue! I have no one to board up my windows, should one strike.

The boards are all cut & marked. And yes, there are men willing to do the job. -- But only for an obscene amount of money! I'm a woman alone. Gouging seems to go with the territory.

I belong to several groups, and have let it be known what I am seeking. But only for a reasonable price, gougers need not apply. Other single women have slipped me phone numbers. "Call so-and-so," they told me, "Don't worry honey, he'll take care of you and he won't gouge you."

Most of the so-and-so's don't return my calls. Or they tell me they don't want the job, soon as they learn I own a two-story house.

The 1st time I was in a similar predicament was the Fall of 99. I wasn't alone, my father and I had just moved here the January before. A bad boy named Floyd was stirring up trouble in the Atlantic. A category 4 hurricane, it looked like our paths were bound to cross!

A category 5 can completely destroy your house. So a category 4 hurricane is nothing to dismiss. Our home, was the only one in the neighborhood, (probably the entire Treasure Coast) that wasn't boarded up. In fact we didn't have boards, period! And this house has large picture windows everywhere!

My father was still recovering from his heart attack and triple by-pass. I asked him what we were going to do????  He shrugged, and said he didn't know.

"So we're just going to die, then?" I responded sardonically.

He took a deep breath. "This happened suddenly, so we're stuck unprepared," my father lamented. He repeated he didn't know what to do. Then he calmly sat down in front of the TV to channel surf as usual. -- As if a category 4 hurricane was not storming toward us!

I was ready to rip my hair out!!! I wanted to shriek at him!!!

Retreating to his dome of denial was the typical way my father handled problems. His philosophy seemed to be that an issue was not really a problem if you don't acknowledge it. I saw this my entire life!

Frantically I ran upstairs and grabbed the phone book. I called every single agency that dealt with Senior citizens and asked for help. Couldn't they send someone out here while we still had some time? I was given lots of phone numbers. Before long, they were giving me each others numbers.

Frustrated, I tried calling the TV networks. I was able to get through to only one. The 1st question they asked was, "Don't you have neighbors?"

I told them this wasn't the 1950's ! Neighbors don't care if you end up as a battered piece of bloody meat hanging from a tree! And this was a Republican neighborhood, too. -- I may as well paint a target on myself, climb on the roof and wait for the hurricane!... They me gave a list of numbers I had already called.

The network had been my last hope. It was getting late. The hurricane was supposed to strike during the night. I decided that when it hit, Dad and I would just huddle in the bathroom downstairs and hope for the best.

Before moving here, my father vehemently insisted that Vero Beach never got hurricanes due it's location on the map. And he always said that hurricane season was over by Oct. 1. -- Both were dangerous misconceptions!

Had it not been for the hurricane, my Halloween decorations would have been up.

I slept little that night as I listened to the winds. At the 1st sound of a crash, I planned to get Dad and we'd go downstairs. But it never happened, soon all was quiet. There is a God!!! The hurricane had shifted direction during the night, sparing us.

Neighbors unboarded their houses. The sun was bright and we were all elated. -- Then came a nasty lass called Irene!

Shortly after the Floyd scare, Irene would be upon us as a category 1. Unlike Floyd, it would be coming over land. No one bothered to board up this time. A back door hurricane, and a category 1, no one expected it to be much.

Irene struck during the night. I heard the winds whipping around furiously! The electricity went out! The lashing winds intensified. I began to get nervous. I sat up in bed, listening and waiting. My room was pitch-black. I heard a crash outside!

The following A.M. after the storm passed, we had no running water. We used a well then. (I always thought that water tasted skanky!) Due to no electricity, our well didn't work. But we had bottled water, which we had to use sparingly.

Irene was a wet hurricane rather than a wind one. Which I thought strange because it came over land. But I found out that's typical. Anyway, we were back to owning waterfront property. Our street was now a canal. We even had a large pond in the back yard. Also a good-sized tree had been blown down.

I took a bucket and walked out to our new pond to get some water for washing dishes and flushing. Our neighbor saw me and let us use his hose. -- It would be an entire week before our electricity was restored.

We ate cold canned food. That October was a hot and humid one. I remember putting on my bathing suit to shower under the hose in our back yard.

But some good came of this ordeal. My father paid the exorbitant amount required to get us switched to city water. (We noticed others in the neighborhood doing likewise.) No more skanky-tasting well water, yuck!

Also he hired a man to measure our windows and cut marked boards for each. My father assured me there would be no problem finding someone to put them up. Lots of people would do it for a reasonable price. -- Another one of his misconceptions!

The next 3 hurricanes (all higher than category 1) I would be enduring alone.