DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — My wife, Pat, and I are packed and ready to go. It didn’t take much time. Like anything else, it’s amazing how much you can accomplish when motivated.
As I write this, our motivation is churning off of the eastern edge of Cuba, a fellow named Matthew.
Maybe if we hunker down in the condo we’ve been enjoying, we could ride out the storm. But maybe it’s not so smart to try to take on a Category 4 Hurricane, especially in a ground floor unit across the street from the beach. A two-lane road, 100-foot walkway and another 100 or so feet of sand (depending on the tide) is all that separates the condo from thousands of miles of Atlantic Ocean — on a calm day.
We will leaving here this afternoon to visit friends on Florida’s other coast.
Not so sure what a 20-25 -foot wave might do to this place. We’re not going to stick around to find out.
Hopefully it will be just as we left it when we return to check on it. But as my son reminded me in a text, “Mathew likes to party … he will trash the place.” Hope not.
All of this brings back memories from the dusty resources of my mind. Do you remember events that go back 50-60 years? I do. I didn’t think I would, until it was mentioned that we could be experiencing a huge hurricane.
Back in 1954, Hurricane Carol hit the coast of New England like a prize fighter’s punch. It remains one of the worst storms ever to bash the Connecticut and Rhode Island shores. And as a little kid, I was right in the middle of it.
We were at the shore. Nothing seemed unusual. We knew there was a hurricane coming up the coast, but the radio (before our first TV) said it was still off of the Carolinas. Well, guess what? When we awakened the next morning Carol was outside our door, rattling our windows. The 14-foot boat we had intended to put in our garage was gone. We found it in pieces two blocks away. And as we peered out a side window, we could see the fury of the storm.
Then, all of a sudden, all went calm. Our mom let us go out in the eye of the storm, but only for about 20 minutes. The first thing I did was to check on my friend Johnny Bill Baker’s beachfront house. The Long Island Sound filled the lower floor.
Next, we ran down to the public beach to see the 25-foot waves. I remember the waves were crashing into a house next to the beach, going in through what was once a picture window and then out from the garage on the other side.
We have no idea what’s going to happen here. Hopefully nothing. But we’ll see … and I’ll let you know.
