old witch HAZEL... the hurricane

I guess I would be remiss if I didn't include something about a hurricane, what with IRENE due to visit us, personally, in a few hours...

So far we're just getting a LOT of rain, which started out as a steady rain earlier in the evening, though it had rained here and there yesterday and today as well. At 4 AM I still have the window here in my room, open, listening to the sound of it. It sounds so nice... for the moment. (No sooner did I say that, than the rains got heavier.)

My older son and I got groceries yesterday. We usually go on Thursdays, but other things came up this time. At least we didn't have to go out and get something special in case the power goes out... We just planned the week's groceries around it. If the power goes, once the storm is over, we can cook and heat water on the gas grill, and thankfully it's still warm outside... so no need to worry about freezing to death, or having to shovel and have a heart attack or something... but the flooding might get to us. Wind is wind, no matter the season though and with trees nearby that's a concern... but then again, if it's strong enough, or if there's a tornado, it might send a small car flying through the air... I just hope it's not mine.

I've lived through a few hurricanes. I remember two especially well because although we made it through alright, each was marked by an event that was a result of the storm ... one I'll never forget... the first one I experienced being Hazel in 1954 ... then Donna in 1960.

In 1954 I was around 4 years old. I remember my (older) brother and I used to play in the basement of our little house on a country road here. ( My younger brother was about a year old then. ) Bit by bit, day by day, more toys went to the cellar to become a world of our own. I set up housekeeping there until finally, ALL my toys were down there the day before Hazel hit.

Mostly I remember my brother loving to ride his tricycle there; but we made chalk drawings on the smoooth concrete floor sometimes, too. Although Mom always left the kitchen door open so she could hear us while she worked, we could make all the noise we wanted to, playing our little record player and skipping, or whatever we wanted to do. It was so nice and clean and solid... cozy, in a BIG way!

That evening we went to dinner at my Grandparent's house a few miles away. ( People used to do that once a month or more back then. ) It was raining when we went there, but I don't remember there being any thunder and lightning, which as far as a child is concerned, is the scarey part. I'd seen rain before, even with wind. It wasn't scarey to me... just chilly and wet, and a bit exciting sometimes.

We got home past 9 pm and although I was sleepy and had napped in the car on the way home, I wanted to get my toys and bring them back to my room. I'd heard some talk of a storm coming,but noone seemed to act alarmed. As a small child all I knew was that if there was a storm coming they belonged safe with me for the night... like I'd be, as long as I was with my parents.

Mom and Dad were tired and really didn't want to tote toys back upstairs after they'd gotten home. They just wanted to get us to sleep so they could go rest, and keep an eye on the storm.. But I said, "please!" and my brother turned to me without hesitating, saying he would help me. He had a few things down there too that were usually in our room... so, with a sigh, my parents looked at one another and said they'd help, if it made me feel better... " but then get right to bed" ... "ok"

In the middle of the night, I remember a light in the hallway entering the room, and sounds of my parents' voices. My mother said the storm was very strong and we were going to sleep in the car tonight... just to bring my blanket and pillow. Nothing to worry about. We'd all nestle together cozy and warm until morning, when the storm stopped. (... like just in case the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed and blew the house down.)

They were calm and I didn't sence any fear. It was just something different. As a small child I didn't know that these things were rare occurances, and extremely dangerous. My parents treated it as a matter of course, and we followed. I got my blanket and pillow and started toward the kitchen, half asleep, and suddenly remembered my little bedtime buddy. I HAD to have HER! It was when I turned to go back that my mother's voice had a sound of urgency in it... I whimpered a bit, and she said ok, she'd go with me, but we had to hurry up because Dad was running the car to keep it warm for us, and we didn't want to leave him out there alone for too long... something like that.

It was just a few feet from the kitchen door to the car, but I remember the wind and rain hitting me as she hustled me through it. The car never felt so warm and cozy after that, nestled up in the backseat, of the big, hefty, American-made sedan, with my older brother. ( My baby brother was aleep in my mother's arms in the front seat. ) She and Dad were talking softly, and barely audible with the wind and rain beating on the roof. In no time at all, I was fast asleep again...

I don't remember why I woke up, but the rain had stopped and the wind had gone. My father said he'd go in and check the house out. They said they'd heard it creaking and moaning in the night, and that's why they'd felt it best to sleep in that car... but it was still standing so she supposed we'd go back inside in a few minutes, as soon as Dad came back.

My brother and I hadn't been afraid because my parents hadn't shown us any fear. To us it was just a great adventure. We could hear the stream to the back of the property roaring, and it sounded exciting. We laughed a little. It had crept up nearly to the back porch. THAT was fun! NOW we had a stream AND a LAKE for sailing our toy boats on!

Dad returned and said it wasn't moaning now, and everything seemed ok... even the power hadn't gone out... but he calmly told my mother that the basement was flooded.

Again there is a bit of a lapse of memory, but I remember Dad opening the door to show us what it looked like, at our urging. It was maybe a foot from the floor above it... but on the one end where the fuse box was, it was a bit lower. It was just enough to spare it and all the wires ... high and dry. I remember them remarking about how THAT was some kind of miracle... in addition to the fact that the house hadn't been damaged at all.

As I stood there in amazement, I thanked my brother for offering to help me bring my things up the night before. My parents' were suddenly reminded of that, in the midst of everything, else, and thanked him too. He was a HERO.

For some reason ( probably exhaustion, and the fact that we had a sump pump, and they didn't expect the storm to dump THAT much water ) my parents hadn't thought of the basement flooding apparently... or they would told US we'd better get our things out of there before going to bed, and probably would have come home earlier. Somehow I just senced they needed to come back upstairs. I felt VERY strongly about it. As a child of 4, I SURELY didn't know they would all have drowned if they had been left there overnight. In fact we'd left them there on other occassions when there were thunderstorms overnight... but then again, these were ALL of my toys... and I just senced something.

Looking at the flooded cellar, my brother and I began to laugh about how we had an indoor swimming pool now. We asked if we could go swimming in it. My mother said NO... that it was FAR too deep... WAY over our heads. Mom said to remember how high the last two steps were... and then we looked again and realized it was almost as deep as Dad was tall, there by the stairs.

We went into our room to play, and I could hear my parents talking low... about the water ... They were trying to decide what to do about getting it OUT. I heard Dad mention the sump pump and how it must have burned out trying to keep up with it.

A neighbor came over and the two men talked. I remember hearing something about what would happen if it HADN'T actually burned out, or blown a fuse, and what might have happened if it tried to kick on, and sent electricity through the water... and burned the house down.

So we were told to hush because Dad was going to go disconnect it, and to do that he had to go through the water. We were told that if it tried to click on, it would send electricity through the water and Dad would be electrocuted. ( For some reason I could see the electricity going out into the water, and Dad freezing up and falling lifeless into it.) So we stood beside my mother, at the top of the stairs watching... silently praying, as little children do. We barely breathed and didn't move a muscle, as we watched him decend the stairs and push through the water to disconnect it. We watched as he held his breath and dipped into it for a moment, reemerged, then pushed back through it with his "catch of the day".

But looking back now, I suppose they knew better. They weren't fools. Anyway, I think they were counting that it had burned out or blown a fuse as another blessing. But I also remember whispers of how we needed to learn things from this. I think that while they hadn't wanted to really alarm us with all that when we needed to be sleeping, and not fussing and crying over it in the night, it was, no doubt, obvious to them, that we didn't realize the seriousness of it... and they used that to make a point.

At some point later, I heard Dad tell Mom that the fire company was pumping out basements all over town, and they couldn't be there until late in the afternoon. He had walked down the road to the one that was only a few hundred feet from our house to ask about that. He told us to keep a look-out for them.

Around suppertime, they finally came. It was exciting to know that these men in their black rubber coats and hats, and big red fire truck, were coming to our house to make everything right again. We watched and listened but stayed out of the way when they finally arrived. Dad opened the outside cellar doors, and we watched as they took a long hose from the truck, with a special screened nozzle on it, and put it in the flooded basement. The engine began to chug, and the pumper was filing with the water.

I have to wonder, now, where the water WENT, after they pumped it out... (I guess it was pumped into the rushing stream. I remember Dad going out back and checking on it off and on all day... saying how much it gone down , and things like that. I just don't remember where it DID go... ) But I DO remember it took them about an hour. For whatever reason, my mother was waiting until they were finished to make supper.

After that, as we sat at the table in the nice cozy little house, all together, safe again, they told us not to go NEAR the stream until they told us it was okay. We were not to even go out back until they said we could. Dad said it was rushing like a freight train and would carry us off so fast that noone would even have time to save us... and we'd be pulled down and bump into things, and drown. I understood what that meant. I had gasped on a mouthful when I was in the bathtub once or twice, and that was uncomfortable enough... and then I knew it meant not seeing them again, too... and how sad they'd be.

Of course there is always more to tell, and this is just one story, but I learned a LOT from that storm... old witch HAZEL... which we later joked was where the WITCH HAZEL water came from.

Donna was another bad one, but for a different reason, and not such a pleasant one... but I'll have to wait to tell you about that sometime later... after this one has passed. The sun will come up soon, and I want to go see how the creek across the way is doing... We may well have another stream with a lake ... I just hope it stays over there, across the road............

Soooo .... Okay, IRENE, what's YOUR story going to be???