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Hurricane Season

Filed under: Imported

I only suffered through one real hurricane scare while living in South Florida. All the others were transparently bogus hokum trumped up by the TV news vultures to scare the snot out of people and drive up ratings.

But Hurricane Floyd, in September of 1999, looked like the real deal, with 100 mph winds that had already wreaked havoc across the Bahamas. The media was absolutely hysterical, with non-stop footage of destruction from previous hurricanes, apocalyptic weather maps, and live reports from local Home Depots as crazed homeowners attempted to transform their residences into nuclear bunkers.

For three days, as the delirium mounted and Floyd crept closer, I remained calm. I'd lived through a slew of hurricane warnings while growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland--and none of them ever amounted to squat. About the most destruction I'd ever witnessed were a few downed tree branches and some trashcans sent hurtling down the street.

But as I piddled around the offices of New Times Broward/Palm Beach on the day that Floyd was slated to arrive, I began to get a little antsy. The staff had all been issued cell phones so that we could remain in contact and effectively cover the carnage that was about to ensue. By early afternoon most people had already fled the office. All of the reporters were planning on bunking at Norman's house because it was the furthest west--and therefore the least likely to be completely underwater in 24 hours. Every media outlet, from oldies stations to PBS, seemed to be broadcasting nothing but storm warnings.

Around 3 p.m. I finally succumbed to the frenzy. I hopped in my car and drove the forty miles north to Lake Worth so that I could feed my cat and gather some supplies. By the time I got there the first vestiges of the storm were arriving. It was already dark out and the wind was whipping around in odd, ominous ways. Rain was sporadically pelting the ground. I grabbed a flashlight, sleeping bag, and change of clothes, and immediately headed towards Norman's house in Plantation, probably a 50 minute drive.

But for some reason I decided that I needed to stop and pick up more emergency provisions. I stopped at a grocery store and sifted through the dregs of what remained after three days of terror-driven shopping: batteries, tuna fish, soup, corn nuts, bottled water, more tuna fish.

But, to my horror, there were no more can openers left. I was convinced that I could not survive Hurricane Floyd without a can opener. I'd be found a week after the storm, dead from starvation, lying next to a tower of unopened cans of tuna fish. I stopped at two more stores, but had no better luck purchasing an instrument with which to open my tuna fish.

Then, just a few miles from Norman's abode, I tried one last grocery store. There was exactly one can opener left. I grabbed it off the rack immediately and felt positively blessed. As if Jesus himself had picked me to be the recipient of this last, lovely can opener--and thus spare me from a painful, protracted death.

We had a good old time at Norman's that night, drinking beer and watching Monday night football and waiting for Armageddon to be unleashed. It never happened. Hurricane Floyd decided to push back out to sea and largely spared South Florida. The next morning, instead of reporting the details of destroyed lives, we swam in Norman's pool and played touch football. It was a glorious day.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 12, 2004 5:42 PM

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