Irma
Up early Sunday morning to check the National Hurricane Center 2 AM advisory, might as well stay up, so B&D. The D is Godiva “intense orange” and there are only a couple of cars at Coombs Inn across the street. Yesterday we had “dinner” at The Grill for the first time in maybe twenty years, table at front window to watch evacuation traffic zip by, large motor homes and small, pickup trucks trailering large boats. We thought to top off my car with gasoline afterward, but the filling station across the street had a long waiting line, no gasoline a block down at Avenue E and 4th Street, nor at Piggly Wiggly, built and started when we lived here years ago by town physician Dr. Photis Nichols, across from his office practice, because he loved the grocery business. I think he may have grown up, one of three Nichols brothers, family with a grocery store in what oddly was called "the Bowery" here in town. A Trinity regular my years here, Photis died in Jacksonville recently and we are to have a memorial service here in Trinity Church next Saturday morning.
We drove out to the west side of town for a short wait at the Marathon station and we’re ready. Two church services at Trinity this morning, 8:00 and 10:30, then our intent, not to say plan, a four-letter word to me, is to head home to 7H because ...
... because we thought to and retrospectively realize we should have completely cleared 7H porch before heading to Apalachicola last Thursday, but didn’t because the NHC forecast had Irma curving up and east and heading safely out into the Atlantic Ocean. Their last several advisories have it shifting westward report by report. At this rate when Irma reaches 30N85W it will be either in Apalachee Bay or over Bay County, so we are going home to “prepare.”
This is not the first obnoxious Irma that I've known in life.
Not good if electricity goes off in StAndrews, as we live seven stories up and octogenarian knees rudely present themselves midway between Level 2 and Level 3. Coming down takes one minute, climbing back up may require a few bottles water, two sandwiches, a blanket and a pillow.
Hurricanes as singularly focus the mind as the sound of carpenters building a scaffold outside one’s cell window. My best memory is summer and fall 1985 when we had three hurricanes here in Apalachicola. The first two, Linda, Tassy and I heeded evacuation notices and fled, once to Marianna and once to Perry. We left for Perry quickly and without money, credit cards or checkbook and the innkeeper there, with attached restaurant, kindly told me to send a check when we returned home.
During one of the hurricanes the pews in Trinity Church had been disassembled and trucked to a company in, I think it was Leeds, Alabama to be stripped and refinished. That Sunday morning we had a “Hurricane Liturgy” in Benedict Hall, the parish house next door. Not absolutely certain, but my recollection is that Kristin Anderson and her mother from Madison, Wisconsin were present for the first time that morning. That would have been 1985 and, as many folks who come here, fall in love with the town's elusive, somehow ineffable charm and attraction and stay, Kristin, an exquisitely talented artist and goldsmith, has ever since been Apalachicola and Trinity faithful.
For our last of that season’s three hurricanes, we said the hell with the evacuation orders, turned out the lights and stayed here inside the rectory, where this very moment I’m having coffee in the kitchen as though back home again. At some point during that storm we heard an explosive crash and looked out the living room window to see orange barrels rolling up 6th Street, tossed by hurricane wind: the old Apalachicola water tower, a landmark and fixture standing tall in the roundabout in front of Trinity Church at Gorrie Square, had collapsed and fallen, a crumpled corpse. The rush of water from it washed out coping around the park in front of the church. Later there was talk and decision about the replacement water tower and it was relocated north of town a few blocks from here, near the riverfront hotel where Linda and I stay when we come to town for a respite from city life.
Not much traffic buzzed by heading west on US98 last night. We are looking forward to being back here again Wednesday morning, knock wood, God willing, and toss a pinch of salt over the shoulder.
Sermon posting later perhaps. Or perhaps not.
DThos+ happily in +Time+
We drove out to the west side of town for a short wait at the Marathon station and we’re ready. Two church services at Trinity this morning, 8:00 and 10:30, then our intent, not to say plan, a four-letter word to me, is to head home to 7H because ...
... because we thought to and retrospectively realize we should have completely cleared 7H porch before heading to Apalachicola last Thursday, but didn’t because the NHC forecast had Irma curving up and east and heading safely out into the Atlantic Ocean. Their last several advisories have it shifting westward report by report. At this rate when Irma reaches 30N85W it will be either in Apalachee Bay or over Bay County, so we are going home to “prepare.”
This is not the first obnoxious Irma that I've known in life.
Not good if electricity goes off in StAndrews, as we live seven stories up and octogenarian knees rudely present themselves midway between Level 2 and Level 3. Coming down takes one minute, climbing back up may require a few bottles water, two sandwiches, a blanket and a pillow.
Hurricanes as singularly focus the mind as the sound of carpenters building a scaffold outside one’s cell window. My best memory is summer and fall 1985 when we had three hurricanes here in Apalachicola. The first two, Linda, Tassy and I heeded evacuation notices and fled, once to Marianna and once to Perry. We left for Perry quickly and without money, credit cards or checkbook and the innkeeper there, with attached restaurant, kindly told me to send a check when we returned home.
During one of the hurricanes the pews in Trinity Church had been disassembled and trucked to a company in, I think it was Leeds, Alabama to be stripped and refinished. That Sunday morning we had a “Hurricane Liturgy” in Benedict Hall, the parish house next door. Not absolutely certain, but my recollection is that Kristin Anderson and her mother from Madison, Wisconsin were present for the first time that morning. That would have been 1985 and, as many folks who come here, fall in love with the town's elusive, somehow ineffable charm and attraction and stay, Kristin, an exquisitely talented artist and goldsmith, has ever since been Apalachicola and Trinity faithful.
For our last of that season’s three hurricanes, we said the hell with the evacuation orders, turned out the lights and stayed here inside the rectory, where this very moment I’m having coffee in the kitchen as though back home again. At some point during that storm we heard an explosive crash and looked out the living room window to see orange barrels rolling up 6th Street, tossed by hurricane wind: the old Apalachicola water tower, a landmark and fixture standing tall in the roundabout in front of Trinity Church at Gorrie Square, had collapsed and fallen, a crumpled corpse. The rush of water from it washed out coping around the park in front of the church. Later there was talk and decision about the replacement water tower and it was relocated north of town a few blocks from here, near the riverfront hotel where Linda and I stay when we come to town for a respite from city life.
Not much traffic buzzed by heading west on US98 last night. We are looking forward to being back here again Wednesday morning, knock wood, God willing, and toss a pinch of salt over the shoulder.
Sermon posting later perhaps. Or perhaps not.
DThos+ happily in +Time+