Posted on 09/27/2004 10:38:41 PM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
There’s an eerie stillness to the night, almost an air of breathless anticipation, you can feel it everywhere you go.
It’s in the way people walk through a parking lot with quick, urgent steps, in the way the woman at the cash register pushes your items across the scanner, even in the short greetings from your neighbors as they rush into the safety of their homes.
Something’s brewing out in the tropics, something very familiar; it’s time to prepare for the coming storm.
Huracán!
I remember the first time the word.
It was 1963 I was traveling in the back seat of an old car that smelled of cigars and cologne, whose windows were opened just enough to allow some air in and stop as much rain as possible.
This was a rainstorm not like the rainstorms that I had known in my short life, not the afternoon rains that would wash away the dust and cool the relentless heat in the streets of my neighborhood, leaving behind puddles to splash in after the clouds broke. This was angry rain, and the gentle tropical breeze had been replaced with short bursts of a howling wind that attacked the palm trees lining the roads, bending them to its will.
My father and the other men in the car were discussing how much further to go, and whether we would be able to get back home if we got too close to the storm. After what seemed like hours, the car stopped and the men got out
“Luisito, mijo…come here”—my father’s voice—“come see.”
We were someplace that I’d never been before, I asked him not too long ago about this, and he doesn’t recall exactly where we were either, but we were close, we were awfully close to the storm.
We stood at the end of a bridge, not on it, but by the rails on the side of the road leading to it, and the waters below made a sound that I’ve never heard again in my life.
There was a door, I remember the door, tumbling and rolling in it. It was red against a world that inexplicably had gone grey, hopelessly helpless in waters that looked dirty and menacing and violent, I followed it until it tumbled out of view.
Then the bloated carcass of a cow floated by, and I buried my face in my father’s side.
“Mijo”—he said—“never underestimate the huracán, never ignore the storm clouds in the horizon.”
Flora was my first huracán, and I’ve never forgotten the way the world feels when storm winds blow in the tropics. The storm cut Cuba from the East skirting the coast, cutting north to south, and then it turned a lazy circle out of sheer evil, running over one spot twice in a day before disappearing into the Northeastern horizon.
It was nearly three decades later that I felt that vaguely familiar, eerie stillness in the night air.
I walked out of by the bay waters of Coconut Grove and found a payphone.
“Viejo”—I think he expected my call—“what’s going on?”
“Huracán mijo, it looks like a big one”—and I battened down my hatches.
Andrew made landfall in the dead of the night.
He came in from the East, leading a legion of wind banshees and a battalion of maelstroms that crushed everything in their path, and anyone touched by the storm, will never forget the way the air felt right before he hit.
I know that I’ll never forget it.
I stood outside and talked to my sons about the dark storms when they gathered in the horizon this year, and I let them stand outside to feel the way that the air felt right before they hit. Then we battened down the hatches, and rode out the storms together.
Florida took four solid hits this year, and John Kerry waited to be invited before coming to see what a huracán can do when it lands…he had to be invited to come see what damages had been suffered by the people he sought to represent.
I think there’s one more storm gathering in the Tropics, it’s building up right down in the middle of Miami…and it’s going to be the big one. We’re going to hit John Kerry like a hurricane, and we’re going to keep on hitting him until he hauls ass back to Boston, and to his Swiss finishing school crowd lawn parties.
There’s a huge huracán gathering once again, and I bet you that after this week, John Kerry and the DNC won’t ever forget what the air feels like, right before one hits you.
I’m the Banana Republican, and I approved this message.
Hurricanes r US , whether in Florida or Louisiana. How appropriate, a major blow for a major blowhard. Kerry a bas!
Jeb's earned his stripes this year. Of course that won't stop the carping but if two thing's are certain they are: hurricanes in Florida and bitching from certain counties.
Thankfully, the west coast and Lee County are far in to the learning curve. Not to mention I've got two inlets to go through for fishing the Gulf due to Charley.
Well done.
Thanks!
Leaving town Thursday AM, and I'm going to miss the debates.
See you in the wake.
Bet. Take care.
Excellent Luis! Kerry thinks Florida is going to be like 2000, I hope the good people there do not let it happen again. It's going to take a lot to make sure that ordinary people, those who usually trust others to make the decisions for them, go out and make sure this election is clear cut....no question.
He's trying to make it like 2000, and it might even be like 2000...but they still won't win Florida.
I think they know it, and that's why they already have Carter and the rest of the usual suspects announcing it, and preparing the counter attack.
They still won't win.
Very nice. I can remember a day later in the 1960s when along with a couple of friends, I decided to swim across a lake in Orlando. It was not a huge Lake but it took some time and when we got back and headed home it was clouding up.
They might have been the clouds of any afternoon thundershower in Florida, but on this day it turned out that a storm had kicked up close by not unlike the one that formed right off the Carolinas this season. It was a small storm and maybe even never hit, I don't remember. But what I do remember is how quickly these storms sometime materialize in an afternoon.
I know.
I spent all Saturday afternoon putting up shutters in, for the second time this year I migh add, all Saturday night hearing the storm outside, and all day Sunday doing lawnwork. But people just North of me got messed up.
It's been a bad year.
:)
It's about to get interesting down here again.
Luis! What a great piece of writing!
I remember my first hurricane too, and we just got the edge of a petered-out storm. Delia was her name, and my husband and I were signing the paper on our new home in Houston when she hit.
The title company tried to hit us with homeowners insurance that we thought was too expensive, and my husband insisted that we stop the proceedings and call around and get a different policy written. Hmmmm. No insurance agents answering their phones!
Finally, we found the last Allstate agent in Houston in his office, and he quickly wrote a policy. Signed the last of the papers and then hit the freeway to get back to our temp housing. That is when we began to understand why downtown Houston was being evacuated. We couldn't even see to drive because the windshield wipers couldn't clear the rain fast enough.
No harm, except my new (not quite finished) house got the sheet rock soaked in the living room because of a broken window. Then they wallpapered right over the damp sheet rock in their haste, and the wallpaper mildewed -- had to be done all over again.
My second hurricane was Alan -- another storm that was predicted to be the "biggest" ever and eventually petered-out by the time it made landfall in Corpus Christi. Of course, I was enjoying Alan on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribean! The port we just left was destroyed 4 hours after our departure, and the port where we were headed was destroyed prior to our arrival. Our ship hid behind Cuba to escape the brunt of the storm, and I spent the night in a bar on the top deck with my pillow and several other travel agents because there was less heave up there.
Did you know that they give travel agents free cruises during hurricane season? They are called Fam Trips. Little known fact! LOL.
It's thundering again...here's one for the old days.
I won't be online to watch the debates with you all.
See you all after Tropical Storm Dubya starts knocking Kerry right back to Boston.
Nice, Luis. Thanks for writing it.
John Kerry is not welcome in Florida.
Heck, after this year, he likely won't be welcome in the United States.
(((Luis)))
Always so nice to hear from you! I really missed your essays, chico. Please keep on writing!
RJayne used to expect me to write, she gave me deadlines to meet. She always told me that I should write every day, if only for a few minutes, and I did it just because she expected me to do it.
I fell out of the habit after 9/11. Then Jayne's health deteriorated, and without her pushing me, I simply stopped.
I feel like a rudderless boat right now, but I want to try again, because I never delivered the last few stories that she expected me to write.
Here goes nothing I guess.
I miss her too, Luis. :-(
Don't give up writing though, you truly have a knack for it!
Great one,Luis! I've missed your essays and I'm so glad to see you writing and posting them again.
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