A Sheltered Life: A story about Hurricane Ivan. 10/30/04

Prelude:

It started three days before the storm was to hit our area. I started packing our duffel bags and back packs with clothes that we would mind losing in the process of protecting ourselves from the approaching catastrophe.

The storm was being tracked by every news venue available on and off cable. TV and radio stations were going nuts trying to keep up with what was happing in the state of Florida. Charley and Frances had hit the west and east sides of the Florida boot.

Our citizens were being battered into submission and the powers in charge weren't finished with us. We were losing our homes, our cars, our patience and all our stuff. All the things we worked all our lives to own, have, and show. What we were going through really did seem to be of biblical proportions. We started to look for the frogs, locusts and plagues to hit right after all the storms had their way with us.

So, here I was, following the news castes along with everyone else. The state was going through some of the worst weather ever recorded. Some were even saying that the people of the good state were "getting punished" for the political problems of the last election. How far out into left field was that. They were saying that all of our electronic election machines were being taken out. Think of it, the entire state's utilities were being taken out by God, Himself. I've come to the conclusion that our nation has gone completely crazy.

But, I regress, so the other two storms hit us hard. And, Ivan was coming. All I could think of was a bit of an old opera, "Ivan, Ho!". But, I wasn't satisfied with that, I came up the a few others, Ivan the Terrible, Ivan the Viking. I was imagining a larger that life, hulk of a man, wearing animal skins and furs, welding a battle ax. I was losing it, even before the winds of Ivan were close enough to rustle the leaves of the oak trees around the house.

For a while I thought that Ivan would turn, at the last moment, and hit Louisiana. I was wishing this thing on someone else. How sick was tha, hoping calamity on others. We would then avert all of the problems and not have to leave. "HOW WRONG WAS I."

So, I'm writing this story to try and make sense out of what we went through. The hardships, the gold nuggets that we prospected out of the sand, mud and scum, that we dug ourselves out of after the winds of Ivan was finished rearranging our stuff. This was like some kind of sick idea for episodes for "This old house" and "Queer eye" that simply went wrong.