The recent hurricanes in Florida sparked a spate of e-mails among my old high school buddies about the hurricanes we lived through in Corpus Christi, Texas. The most notable was Celia, in 1970. I also remember family tales of Carla, that hit Houston in 1961, as well as Beulah in 1967 or so.
Celia hit Corpus hard, and our house was pretty messed up. I was too young (10) to worry about the insurance settlement, getting SBA loans to replace the floors, carpets, roof, fences, windows and so forth - so for me it was amazing. My apologies if, for you, hurricanes are more about trauma. Here are some images.
- Boarding up windows with plywood. When you ran out of plywood, taping the windows with criss-crosses like a magic talisman against evil. Tape worked about as well as you'd expect a magic talisman to work.
- Making sure you were wherever you wanted to be when the storm struck. Then during the "eye," deciding you really needed to be somewhere else. My brother Tommy went from his friend's house to his girlfriend's house (Marsha Hedrick - now his wife), much to my Mom's dismay.
- Making the drive out to relatives' houses in landlocked Sinton, Alice, Banquete, San Antone, Austin. If you decided to go, it was usually a waste of time, the storm was either no big deal or your house was fine. If you didn't go, you were tempting fate.
- Staying glued to the radio. Tracking the storm's progress with pins on the maps the Caller-Times printed. Walter Furley and Gene Luper giving us the details in their best fatherly fashion.
- Surfers dreaming of riding the tidal wave. This was my brother Tim, begging Mom "Can I at least just go down to the bay and look at it? (No!) Oh, MAN!"
- Watching the fences blow down and the cedar shingles fly. Until a shingle came through the very window my dog and I were looking through - then we were both crying and relegated to the windowless hallway.
- Seeing that cars and trucks were blown way down the street, swept into ditches.
- Water, water everywhere. Mountains of soggy carpet and ugly particolored carpet pad (who knew that was under there?) and sodden sheetrock you could crumble in your hand. Mildew. Heat. I still can't stand the smell of Lysol.
- Being grateful we were all still alive and well. Never mind the stuff, it's just stuff.
- Neighbors all banding together to help dig out, share stories, ditching the cliques and the racism and finally talking and acting like a community.
- The dogs roaming loose because all the fences were gone. I remember Phineas (we bought him from Bruce and Claire Collins) swimming across the street (Haroldson).
- Twisted pretzel light poles and all the big signs down, down, down. People taking street signs to use as home decor. Driving around to look at the damage and marvel at the storm's power.
- Lines at the gas station. Grumbling and outrage about price gougers. Feudo's Grocery with its same old friendly prices, running the cash registers on generators.
- Sharing tools and building supplies. Doing your own contractor work because there weren't enough to go around, it was cheaper, and you couldn't go to work anyway.
- Learning to build fences with a manual post-hole digger. Learning that enterprising teenagers could make good money selling this service to the neighbors. Getting really damned tired of the hellishly difficult work of digging post holes. Having to finish all the work anyway.
- Checking on the little old ladies, like Mrs. Gragg, my piano teacher, on Claremore street - turned out she was enjoying sitting around her house naked with all the windows open to stay cool.
- Thinking: Damn! Too bad this couldn't happen during school - they'd have had to let us out!
- Everybody barbecuing all kinds of meats and everyone welcome to eat as much as they liked. Venison sausage and burgers on Monette with my Dad.
The "Gone with the Wind" poster and graffiti at the Normandy apartments on Alameda.
- Those weird, amazingly intricate little curlicue rings and bracelets we made out of colorful coated telephone wires. Cullen experienced a huge wave of those that fall, and Southwestern Bell had to appeal to people to stop stealing it. But the telephone repair guys would always give us kids some, anyway.
But that crap about adversity bringing out people's best? It's true.
