Remembering Beulah

So Emily came for a visit today and brought a lot of wind and rain with her, but then, isn't that the way with hurricanes? We got a lot of water we desperately need down here, what with the drought and all, and we seemed to have escaped any great damage, at least around here in my neighborhood. I noticed a tree uprooted at the first lot down the street, but that was the extent of the damage I noticed in this area. I heard that thousands of people were, and probably still are, without electricity. There were also several tornados spotted in the Valley, one traveling around 70 mph down the Valley. But we seemed to have gotten off easy. We stayed at home the whole time, but a lot of people had to go to shelters and spent several hours there.

Emily seemed to have taken a similar route as Beulah did back in '67. At that time, my folks had to go to a public shelter. I remember that then, two of my father's brothers were staying at my grandmother's, and one didn't want to go. He didn't believe the hurricane was dangerous and thought that the tv news would make a big deal of people showing up to the shelters for nothing.

At that time, there were only two tv stations in the Valley. One of them would carry NBC and CBS, alternating the networks at certain times of the day.

So the whole entourage showed up at the National Guard Armory, and we quickly found a place to settle down. We were too late to get one of the rooms, so we settled in the public area with a lot of people. People kept arriving as the wind and the rain continued.

I met a couple of girls I had wanted to meet. They were in a lower grade, but then, since I'd skipped a grade, their sisters in my class seemed kind of old, and these girls were my age. Wouldnt' you know it, I never saw them again after that night.

But people kept arriving, and the rain kept pouring. The wind was bad. I was puzzled at what was happening in the armory. Why did a man keep objecting to some people drinking water from the fountain just because their skin was a different color? Why did people demand and expect to be fed by the National Guard? Their argument was that their taxes paid for the Guard. I thought that we were just lucky to be there in the first place and couldn't figure out why those others demanded special treatment. The first man mentioned started objecting to those people being in the same place as everyone else, and the guard had to calm him down. When an announcement was made that medical personnel were needed at the hospital, one of those people who happened to be a nurse left with the guard.

My little cousins were so excited to be there; it was a thrilling experience for them to be in a hurricane. They were thrilled when their mom gave them crackers and vienna sausage and pork and beans for dinner. The next day when we left, they were disappointed that they wouldn't eat that anymore.

When we got to my grandmother's house after the hurricane, my mom and I reminded them that the news team had said not to drink water from the faucets until we had run it several minutes. My uncle who never believed the news bulletins said that there was nothing wrong with the water, and to prove it he took a glass and went to the tap. When the turned the faucet, snails came out with the water. My cousins asked their mom if they could have some more crackers and pork and beans.

After the hurricane, there were over a hundred tornados reported. There was a lot of flooding all over the Valley. Evertually there were a lot of mosquitos and the cities had to spray all over to kill them off. Places were flooded for days. But eventually everything went back to normal. School continued, and I went back to wondering where the following year would find me, college or Vietnam.