Storm of the Decade!!
The meteorologists were apoplectic, the newscasters were tearing their hair out, the public was in panic mode, grocery stores ran out of bread, hardware stores sold out batteries and flashlights, the streets of Stanwoodopolis were nearly empty by Friday night. The storm of the decade was on its way, possibly the storm of the century!
Some killer typhoon was headed our way from Asia, crossing the Pacific at unimaginable speeds, headed like a runaway locomotive for the South End and the entire west coast from Northern California to British Columbia. We were warned to hunker down, take cover, stay inside. Hurricane force winds would be pounding the coast, tearing up the bluffs, blowing down houses and trees. Our neighbors came over with updated wills they wanted us to witness and sign. Surely this was the End As They Knew It.
We signed their wills and gave them a tearful goodbye. Our lanterns and oil lamps were at the ready on the table. The mizzus kept her I-pad tuned to the dopplers that showed a dark red blot representing winds advancing on us like Trump supporters. We were doomed and we knew it. I hated myself for not digging the tornado shelter when I had the chance, for not buying the big ass generator to keep us alive in the coming electricless days ahead, for leaving us unprotected against the fury of Nature herself, for living a life of sloth and hedonism. Because now the Piper had come for his payment and we didn’t even have children to offer.
Outside the leaves began to move in a twisted dance as the trees stirred with the first onslaught. The waters on the Sound broke in wave after wave. The lights, did they flicker? Was this it? Was this the beginning of the end? Would we die without knowing who won the 2016 presidential election? After the long depraved descent into the monstrous maelstrom of petty personal politics this past year and a half? It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. Not after all the crap we had endured to make it this far. Only to come this close. Let the storm hit Donald, Lord, let the storm hit someone else, anyone else!
The Lord, well, she listened apparently, but in her mercy she spared nearly everyone. The storm of the century gave us gusts of, oh, 25 miles an hour or so, nothing that interrupted the power, nothing that prevented us from watching bad TV on our last night on earth. The weather people warned, by the time we called it bedtime, that the threat was still there. The newsfolks showed a house with a tree on its roof. Every station showed the same house. Proof that the danger was real! They hadn’t made it up. Look! They had a windsurfer who had to be rescued by a fellow windsurfer. And this! A kayak buffeted by wild waves near shore. Who paddled beyond camera range and, we can only assume, to his watery grave.
I write this the next day. The sun is shining on what should have been Desolation Row. A fir bough, torn from its tree, is buried point down next to the garden path. A lawnchair is on its side. Leaves are piled into the porch corner. But we’re alive. We’re alive! Later on I’ll walk up to my neighbors who rewrote their will. They said if a tree landed on their house and killed them in their sleep I could have their old outboard motor in the shed. I sure hate to get a motor that way, but a deal’s a deal.
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I suspect it was the trauma talking….