I awoke this morning at 2:34 and we filled with a sleepy joy as I rolled back over and snatched 1:41 more sleep. It’s like stealing time and I’m about it (kids say that). It’s quiet in Baton Rouge and by the looks of it, it shall remain. It made me ponder a lot of quiets before the storms in my life. No this won’t be some deep thoughts play on words. I’m actually thinking about the hurricanes I’ve lived through. For more emotional strife, leave now and tune in tomorrow. For a meteorological Pulitzer worthy piece. Read on. 

I’ve told you over and over of my move from the mean streets of suburban Detroit, Michigan to one block from the Gulf of Mexico in 1978, numerous times. Our home

was one from the corner on a 3 street, circular “neighborhood” called Pitcher Point, supposedly named after the dastardly Mississippi Pirate, John Pitcher. He was apparently so hated his crew burned him in a tree, and so, the developers decided to honor his  evil by naming a street in a small Mississippi enclave after him. This little hood was also ground zero for Hurricane Camille in 1969, and ten years later when we moved there, a slab where a house once stood remained. This was convenient for me as it provided a half court basketball court as my dad, not wanting more neighbors, purchased it. 

My first “real” hurricane experience came a year later when on September 12th, 1979 Frederic came ashore near Dauphin Island, Alabama. We evacuated a few miles north of our home to stay on the floor of a friend’s house. Tornadoes ripped through its backyard as well as through ours knocking over some fence, but otherwise we remained unscathed. My deepest memory? It was loud and I was uncomfortable and I’d wished it woulda hit in the daytime so I could have seen something happen. 

The next big one I remember was Elena in 1985. It hit in September and we rode it out at home. My mom and a foreign exchange student who’d lived with us for a month or so. He was a musician and wrote a song about it the refrain a YMCA like spelling of the storm name. E-L-E-N-A, ELENA!  I can’t quite remember if my dad was away at rehab or not by then but if not it wouldn’t be too long after. The other vivid memory of this storm was the perfection of the day before. Me and Chip Grant tore all over the Bay of St. Louis and back bayous of Pass Christian, our 14 year old souls oblivious to the causes of the  steep drop in humidity, concerned only with squeezing in one more hydroslide run.  The hurricane a push pin marker on the start of a rough year. 

In 1992, I was in college when Andrew blew through town. True hurricane parties were held as we played massive UNO games on my bed and drank a bottle of dark rum we found in the cabinet out of a bowl with the last ice cubes in the house. The power was out for a few days but I don’t remember being hot at all. I always find memories bizarre in this regard. I know global warming is a thing but it had to be close to this hot back in the day? I never remember it that way. This is baffling, but no less true. Maybe “heat and humidity” memories are sheltered by  our PTSD defense mechanisms lest we never go outside in Louisiana again?

Somehow I have no other hurricane memories until Katrina, in 2005. Doesn’t seem like we could have gone that long without a doozy of a storm, but without doing a major search of the NOAA or at the least, googling it, I can’t think of one. I mean as if we needed it. Katrina really holds a placemat in Louisiana and Mississippi Guff Coast history. Baton Rouge proper had the usual power outages and downed trees but the real impact was the 200,000 plus people from New Orleans that just arrived here in a day, some to remain for good. If you’re wondering, that’s about 175,000 people more than what’s needed to shut  down a city’s streets. The infrastructure just couldn’t handle it. Nor could the grocery stores and everything else for a couple weeks and it was pretty nuts for 6 months to a year. Where NOLA’s loss was a breakdown of man made safeguards followed by  floods and  a real time social experiment and reflection of the economic disparity that existed (exists) in much of the Deep South, the Mississippi Gulf Coast was simply erased, 60,000 plus homes smashed upon themselves and washed out to sea. An erasure of place that is still being rebuilt from memories. From Pascagoula to Baton Rouge, mentioning Katrina evokes a specific set of memories. A before and after point anchored in time. 

One week later Rita hit the same Louisiana towns that were smashed by Laura yesterday. My only real memory for Rita is packed within the Katrina memories. On the day it blew through town, I was downtown in my restaurant making 100 burritos for  the troop of Department of Environmental Quality employees who were living in a state building across the street. I remember getting there at 5 am or so, my wife wondering if I’d lost my mind, cooking and assembling and then rolling over a cart of food as the winds nearly knocked me down. 34 year old me wasn’t fazed by a storm coming ashore 100 miles away. I had shit to do. 

2008’s, Gustav, was the last major storm that hit around here. The CNN’s of the world hunkered down in New Orleans, secretly praying that the levees would break and that they could capture it in real time. My friend Ryan stayed with us and he Jeanne, Paige and Ian and I spent the night having a dance party. We lost power, and awoke to the winds, Ryan and I huddled in my small bathroom watching and waiting for one of the three pine trees in my yard to snap. Pine trees don’t snap like you’d think they would. Must be sap content or as Luke, my contractor friend pointed out yesterday, “we build houses out of pine trees.”  After declaring the storm a dud, Ryan and I drove around town and witnessed that it was the opposite of that. What was likely a thousand trees down all over town. We lost power for 14 days and I spent a month as a fence installer and tree remover. We had 50% of the tools needed for said work so I became a laborer. I haven’t gone back to that since, but know that in a pinch I can at the lease dig post holes, run a chainsaw, and mix concrete by hand. This also marks the last time I ate McDonalds.  After a 6-8 hour day of fencing, one of the homeowners bought me a number 4 (quarter pounder with cheese) with fries. 

The past week’s hurricane shutdown is eerily similar to quarantine, but only for a few days.  As such it doesn’t hold the same amount of excitement as past hurricane days but unlike the last 4 months, at least something happened at the end. That’s one of the underlying oddities of COVID life. Nothing happens. We are waiting, we stoked up on TP and water and now we wait. It’s been like a 5 month hurricane with no winds to mark the before and after.  For those of you not living in hurricane alley, this is what it feels like. Except most times here, houses are washed away, power is lost and pieces remain to be reassembled. 

#hugsandhi5s