I probably shouldn't have eaten a giant bowl of ice cream just before going to bed. I've been having weird dreams all night, including one about falling off a steep trail on the side of a mountain behind the
Our Lady of the Snows national shrine. What is so funny about that is that Our Lady of the Snows is in Illinois (no mountains) and I haven't been there since I was a child. Anyway, as I was laying there in bed this morning hacking up balls of phlegm, I realized it was twenty one years ago that Hurricane Andrew blew through here. Andrew was the first hurricane I had ever experienced. Although that would be untrue since I really didn't experience the hurricane. Instead, after boarding up my windows, I got in my car along with two friends, four cats, and a dog, and drove to Orlando before it hit. The worst part about running away was sitting in my brother's living room in Orlando, and watching the news reports. All they were showing was destruction. Houses obliterated, cars smashed, and boats flung far ashore. So on the morning after the hurricane hit I loaded up the cats, dogs, and friends, and returned home. The entire ride home I pictured the worst, my house in pieces, everything I had worked for smashed. The closer we got to Fort Lauderdale the more we could see downed trees, and roofs ripped off. As I turned the corner of our block, the results of Hurricane Andrew became obvious. A large tree branch had fallen and knocked out the electric to our house, and a family of raccoons were having a party on the roof of the house next door. That was it, that was all that Hurricane Andrew did to our block. We've been very lucky this season. Super dry sand storms off the Sahara Desert have impeded the formation of hurricanes. The problem is next year, and the year after. Since Andrew I have stayed and experienced hurricanes. It is not a pleasant thing to go through, and the older I get, the less I want to deal with them. Which makes me wonder, why do so many old farts pick Florida as the place where they want to sit around and wait to die? Is drowning, or having the roof fall on you more preferable to freezing to death?
Yes, it is preferable to freezing to death. The cold doesn't pass by like a Hurricane. And no one gives you free MREs and waters. I'd rather my roof be blue than my whole body. (PS: September is the peak month for hurricanes. We're not out of the woods yet).
ReplyDeleteI've heard that when you freeze to death it is just like falling asleep... that is, after the initial horrible pain. Maybe that's one reason I want to move back to Chicago. Chances are I'd be hit by a CTA bus sooner than freeze to death, and if I don't see it coming it would be painless.
ReplyDeleteWhich Hurricane was it , that Mark insisted on travling north up the coast until you found a hotel with electricity?
ReplyDeleteStephen, that was Katrina. Just a month later Wilma hit and we didn't have electric for two weeks.
ReplyDeleteI want to die drowning in a vat of cherry jello clinging onto super models. Sandstorms, huh?
ReplyDeleteMaybe in your dream you pictured yourself as Mary being carried on the Pilgrim's shoulders and you fell off...
ReplyDeletehttp://snows.org/events/our-lady-of-the-snows-novena/novena1/