A short hurricane story.

Remembering Floyd

Dateline Cleburne TX: August 2008.

Once upon a time there was a hurricane named Floyd.

It was a giant storm that was going to erase Florida in a torrent of wind and rain.

I was in Baltimore when Floyd decided to spare Florida and come roaring ashore on the Jersey coast.

I was one of the last trucks to pass over the Key bridge before it was shut down. The wind was howling a duet with the cables of the bridge. The sea was boiling. Yes the sea does boil in a hurricane.

Physics gone wild.

I spent a white knuckle evening driving from Baltimore to Albany NY. Trees kept blowing onto the road flying out of the darkness into the beams of my headlamps.

By the time I slowly plodded through the sheets of rain poor Albany was flooded. The downtown streets were rivers of white water and garbage. The night was furious. Every object was alive dancing or straining in the wind.

Most of the streets were blocked off but there were no police to be found. In fact i was the only person out on the road. Almost.

At the top of a hill by a barricade was a man in a yellow slicker and rubber boots. He looked like a public works official.

I pulled over to ask him which way was safe to go. The man stepped out of the flooding street onto my running board and leaned in my window. "what do you want?" he asked. "I need to know how to get to the bottom of the hill safely". He looked at me and cocked his head. "What do you need?"

Hmm... what an odd time for philosophical questions I thought.

Then I noticed that even though it was dark, in the middle of a torrential rain, the public works man was wearing pitch black sunglasses."What are you looking for?"

Duh. Man was I astounded by the guys work ethic. Neither wind nor rain nor dark of night or even a full blown hurricane was going to stop this friendly neighborhood dope man.

I thanked him for his concern but assured him all i needed was safe passage to the bottom of the hill