Welcome to Flashback Friday!
When you live in Charleston, SC for any length of time, you get used to hurricanes. They are a regular part of life there. During August and September, you watch the weather religiously, make runs to the store for batteries, bread, peanut butter, bottled water, and duct tape, and get ready for a day…maybe two…off school or work. Usually by the time the hurricane makes landfall, it has weakened to category 1 status, or more than likely been demoted to a tropical storm. We would then just sit around, wait for the elevated storm to hit, watch TV until the power went out for an hour or two, and if it was night time, go to bed. The next morning we’d get up and pick up what little bit of debris had blown into our yard, go find our trash cans that had blown a few houses away, eat the peanut butter and Cheetos, and go on with our lives.
When the weather people started tracking Hurricane Hugo in September of 1989, I was almost seventeen years old and had just started my senior year of high school. I lived in Summerville, which was about thirty minutes inland from the coast of South Carolina. And I pretty much ignored everything about their reports until they canceled school the day before it was to make landfall. When I was finally forced to pay attention, I realized, along with everyone else that Hugo was pretty scary. It was huge for one thing, and it had built up to a category 5 over the Atlantic ocean. It was a monster, and it was out to eat Charleston alive.
My last experience with a hurricane of any consequence was Hurricane David, which hit Charleston in 1979. While it wreaked havoc on the Dominican Republic, by the time it hit us, it was just a baby hurricane and only caused minimal damage. But to an almost-seven year-old, it seemed pretty fierce…especially since our power went out for the night. And especially since it marked the time I first saw a naked man. My dad was on sea duty, and during hurricanes, all the ships had to head out to the ocean, since that’s safer for them than being docked. Well, in the early evening hours, our shed in the backyard blew over, so my mom called our neighbor, Jim, who was home. We all watched him run out into the pounding rain in his rubber boats and rain slicker to retrieve our shed, when all of sudden the wind caught the front of his coat, and we discovered that Jim had nothing on under said slicker. The next thing I knew my mom was pushing me away from the window. That’s about all I remember of Hurricane David.
So, on September 21, 1989, I just parked myself in front of the TV and worked myself into a frenzy all afternoon. By nightfall when the wind started to pick up and the rain began to fall, I was pretty convinced that we were all going to die.
During the actual storm, I don’t remember a whole lot. We had brought a mattress into our foyer area, which was the safest because it was the innermost part of our little duplex, and it was the furthest away from any windows. I remember we had our radio, which was running on batteries by now, tuned to Q107, the only station that was still on the air. I remember when it finally went fuzzy it felt like the world had ended. I remember it was incredibly loud. I thought that any moment the roof was going to peel off.
I don’t remember how much time passed, but gradually it began to die down, and the eye was passing over. It was eerily quiet. We took our flashlights and went outside. I think it was around midnight, but nearly the entire neighborhood was outside trying to see the damage. We couldn’t see much, but there were branches everywhere. Our old Dodge Aries, which we had prayed would have a tree land on it, was standing unharmed.
We went back inside to await the backside of the storm, which according to the meteorologists would probably be even stronger than the frontside. The noise, which sounded like freight trains, started up again. I fell asleep.
The next morning we couldn’t leave our neighborhood. Huge trees had fallen and were blocking the main road out and in. It wouldn’t be until the next day that we could drive anywhere. We had no water, electricity or phone.
Our home was basically undamaged. When we were finally able to leave, we cautiously drove around and were awed by the destruction. It didn’t seem like the Charleston area could ever be the same.
Cars were piled on top of one another in parking lots everywhere.
Sailboats fared even worse.
Beach houses were flattened.
Where I lived, most of the damage was from trees and the water that came in where the trees fell. The damage all over the state was indescribable.
The next few weeks were interesting to say the least.
We had water after just a couple of days, but it was ice cold and smelled and tasted like pine. The phones came on sometime within a week, and that made my nearly seventeen year-old heart sing. We didn’t have power for about a week, but it seemed like a month. I remember I was lying on our sofa reading when all of sudden our TV snapped on, and there was Oprah Winfrey. I could have kissed Oprah right then.
I was out of school for about three weeks. Our football field was damaged, and we didn’t have another home game that season. Our homecoming game was played at a different school. On a Tuesday night.
My mom and I both worked at a clothing store called Hamrick’s. The front windows had been blown out during the storm and much of the merchandise ruined. Mom and I went in and worked for a couple of days in water up to our ankles helping to inventory moldy, damp clothes. It was the hardest, most unpleasant cash I’d ever earned.
Getting gas for the car and groceries was interesting.
I remember going with mom to wait in long, long gas lines. All of the grocery stores lost power too, so much of the food was spoiling and had to be disposed of. Mom knew a lady from work whose daughter was the manager of a McDonald’s, and she gave us a whole case of McRib sandwiches. We had power by then, so we froze them and had those for a long time. I remember once going with mom to stand in line for free milk. I felt like a refugee.
At the time, as a self-centered, narcissistic teenager, I felt like my life was over and was very woe-is-me. Now, as an adult, I’m glad for that experience. I’m thankful for what it taught me.
I no longer live where hurricanes are a threat. Yet every time that I hear one is nearing the coast or the gulf I watch with interest, and I pray for those who might be affected, who might lose their homes, their livelihood, their dignity. I pray that they too would be better for the experience. I hope they won’t be exposed to any mid-storm flashers. And maybe….just maybe….they might score a case of McRibs.
***And don’t forget….it’s not too late to enter my contest! It will run until 8pm central tonight. Details here!***
