trying to reason with hurricane season

There is absolutely nothing like being in the path of a Category 4 hurricane to focus your mind. I have lived nearly all my life in Florida - since 1951, if you need to know - and this is the first time in all that time that a hurricane has actually aimed itself at me and my hometown. Naturally, this causes everybody to stop their normal humdrum routine and think serious thoughts, like: What if I have no home to go home to after tomorrow? What if I have a home but the roof and three walls are gone? What if the walls are standing but a large oak tree has crushed the roof? We've had the oak-tree-roof experience already, thank you; that is once is too many. Now I'm looking at my neighbor's old oaks, wondering which way they might go down.

So we got the day off from work. OK, now what? Got the tank of gas, got the cash from the bank, got the prescription refilled. Time for the final pre-hurricane checklist: Water, check. Beer, check. Movies, check. Overhanging tree limbs? Better do the trimming I should have done a month ago. OK, check. Gutters? They need to be cleaned every 19 years whether they need it or not. OK, check. Better stake down the new young replacement oak so it won't blow away. OK, check. Move the potted plants in before they become missiles. OK, check. That killed half the day, and now it is time to take a hot shower and relax.

Relax? What's this? Our Cat 4 storm has taken a right turn. After avoiding Naples, it turned and came ashore across pretty little Captiva and Sanibel Islands. I hope it didn't ruin everything. There was an island north of Clearwater Beach that got carved into two islands in 1921, and now they are separated by "Hurricane Pass." There's no film on TV from Captiva or Sanibel Islands, which seems ominous. Now it is heading up U.S. 17, following the highway like an Army aviator following a Triple A map, in the direction of Orlando. That is not good. Yesterday they were probably yukking it up that poor Tampa Bay was going to get clobbered. People from here went there to avoid the storm. Today, they are hustling for the plywood, water, etc.

Why do I have a sense of regret that the storm missed us? We have been missed before. Hurricane Donna was a close one. That's the one that wrecked Naples and worked its way up the state in 1960. My father, principal of Palm Harbor Jr. High School, opened the school as a hurricane shelter. That was some kind of adventure with the rain and wind, but we had no idea how close we were to disaster. They didn't have satellite radar maps and non-stop talking heads on TV then. That was also before the coasts of Florida filled up with high-rise condos and hotels. There are old-timers, older than me, who have wished out loud for a good hurricane to flush it all away. I don't share that sentiment because I know some of those folks. They invested their retirement money in a cube of air in the sky and they do not need to come back and discover that the surrounding walls, etc., are out in the Gulf somewhere.

But you have to admit, an unmitigated disaster of that sort might discourage the further "improvement" of what's left of Florida.

Jimmy Buffet staggered off the hammock and into the nearest bar to get another bloody Mary (in the song). We celebrated our good fortune with a batch of Margaritas. Tomorrow, I will haul a ton of cut tree limbs out to the curb for pick-up on Monday. Then, the normal humdrum begins again. Thank God for a normal humdrum. It could be much worse.