Hurricistory Part 1 - "The Older Generation"

I decided to do the hurricane retrospective (or hurricistory) since Sarah's greatest hurricane experience was picking up the tons of wet and spiky pinecones and building the pinecone pyre after a storm. She can't help it, most of her experiences were of relatively minor storms.

My earliest memories of hurricanes was that of complete boredom. Before a storm my Mom would go to the store and buy cans and cans of deviled ham, vienna sausages and loaves of Wonder bread. It was during hurricanes that I developed my life long hatred of the above items. Mostly we were bored because of course there wasn't any electricity, all the neighborhood kids were locked up in their homes with their equally bored families, no electriciy, no tv of course, my brothers aggravating the hell out of each other, my Dad smoking his Camels one after the other, and my Mom cooking all the food in the fridge because we had to eat it before it went bad.

It wasn't until Hurricane Betsy that I really understood what all the fuss was about. We lived on Grand Route St. John off Esplanade Avenue and just a few blocks from City Park. I was a senior in High School and school had barely started before Betsy hit the city. This was back in the time before Doppler radar and all the sophisticated prediction software. But we weren't scared because we had Nash. Now if you were from N'Awlins baby and of my generation and older you knew about Nash Robersts the ultimate hurricane prognosticator. ( Just an aside, at work Friday a co-worker told a story about a friend of a friend, who lived in Nash's neighborhood, and said if Nash's car was in the carport he would stay but if his car was gone he was gonna get the hell out of dodge.)

Anyway the wind was just screaming around the house and the rain was pouring down and of course there was no electricity and I was a teenager and what does a teenager do when there isn't anything else to do but go to sleep. Because teenagers, as we all know can sleep through anything. As I learned later (while I was sleeping), the window over my brother George's bed blew out covering him with glass and debris.

Think I'll take a break now, Sarah want's to post some more film. Stay tuned, I'll be back! with Hurricistory part 2, the Older Generation.