Hurricane Gustav

As we watched Gustav in the Gulf, it began to get more and more obvious we'd almost certainly have to evacuate. The proposition started to shape itself as WHEN will we have to leave, and not WILL we have to leave. By Wednesday, I was pulling together clothes for both Big Man and me, and thinking about what else we'd need to bring. Unfortunately, lulled into a false sense of security by Hurricane Faye, and bothered by an empty cupboard since our return from vacation, Big Man and I went out and made groceries on Monday -- BIG groceries, filling the house, the fridge, and the freezer with something like $350 worth of food, both perishable and nonperishable. My sister L hollered at me when she found out, "What were you thinking??" and the truth was, I wasn't thinking. I guess those 15 years I spent away from the city made me forget about hurricane season and how you always have to be on the alert, keeping your larder low and easy to pack.

Thursday I had planned to loan my car to my sister L, but that was abandoned when we discovered I had yet another flat tire. (With all the debris, New Orleans is flat tire central since Katrina, and my car is a case in point: I've had *3* flat tires in the year I've been home.) Our favorite quick and cheap repair and used tire place is across the river, and we headed there after Big Man got up. While we waited for the repair, we had a conversation with the Creole gentleman next to us, who showed us what he thought was an essential piece of hurricane preparation: a gas can full of gas to help you get through the chaos of evacuation. It was an "aha" moment for us.

After getting the tire fixed, we headed to Academy to get a large ice chest so we could do our best to preserve all that meat and all those frozen veggies. Academy, a favorite store of ours, had moved hurricane items -- giant water jugs, gas cans, ice chests, lanterns, battery-operated fans, crank radios, waterproof match holders -- to the very front of the store. We got the ice chest we had originally come for (debating for a LONG time over relative merits and sizes), a 5-gallon water jug, as well as the gas can recommended by our new friend, and a new pair of athletic shoes for Big Man. We were surprised that Academy was not as crowded as we had feared, but it turned out that most folks were vacillating over preparing for the storm, and that all the Academy stores were jam-packed just a few days later.

We could not decide where to evacuate. Our choices were above I-12 in Slidell, where my one of my sisters and her family has relocated after the loss of their house in Chalmette after Katrina, and my brother and his wife's house a few miles east of Pensacola, Florida. Ironically, we had been planning for some time to spend Labor Day weekend at the latter place, but as Gustav approached, we went back and forth, back and forth, over where we wanted to go. Ar first we settled on Slidell, it being closer and my brother-in-law having a couple of back-up generators, in case they lost power. But more and more, as the storm got closer, it seemed to make more sense to go further away.

Or maybe it wasn't exactly that it made sense. Maybe sense didn't have much to do with it. It was the Katrina anniversary, and everyone was on edge, anxious, jumpy, close to tears. I made the mistake of reading Tom Piazza's City of Refuge, his Katrina novel that was chosen for "One Book, One New Orleans", and it upset me quite a bit. By the time Saturday rolled around, I had had enough. I wanted to leave town and I wanted to leave like *yesterday*. My preparations grew more and more frantic and almost panicked. In the end, I wanted to be as far away as we could go, and I wanted to be with loved ones. So Big Man agreed to Florida.

I spent Friday alternately looking at the hour-by-hour news reports about Gustav's dawdling in the Caribbean, packing, and trying to tie up loose ends at the church. Big Man went with me to the church office, and we moved my desk away from the window (in case the glass broke), picked up the hard drive, grabbed a couple of the more beloved art work from the walls, changed the outgoing message on the answering machine, and posted signs around the building canceling everything until Thursday. We unplugged things, and looked around, trying to decide if there was anything else to be done. We left with a funny feeling. What would all this look like when we returned?

But we could not leave town until Big Man was assured that he was not needed at the nightclub, and we did not get that assurance until he got home from work early Saturday morning. So our plan was to leave Saturday as soon as Big Man woke up.

I woke that morning, as usual, before Big Man and continued with packing, but it's true I was getting more and more upset, and even frightened. I wanted to be AWAY. Big Man finally woke up and we loaded the van with 10 gallons of water, the new ice chest absolutely full with just about everything from the fridge and freezer, a box with unperishable food items, 2 laundry baskets full of clean clothes, Big Man's horns and keyboard (practice goes on even in a hurricane), and the cat carrier with a mad-as-a-wet-hen Smokey Robinson (he hates his carrier). We checked the house and made it as secure as we could, propping open the doors of the empty refrigerator, per instructions from our landlady, reluctant to buy more appliances after another hurricane's power outages. We were on our way by 2 pm; with noises being made about "encouraging" evacuation, we decided Highway 90 was our best bet.

The drive along 90 was an exercise in nostalgia and patience. Nostalgia because I don't think I've driven that route in 30+ years; patience because of all the traffic. (Although it wasn't near the gridlock that I-10 was.) The drive to Pensacola, which should have taken 3 hours if done under normal circumstances on the interstate, took us fully 7 hours. (To be fair, however, it must be noted that we stopped for a half-hour in Biloxi so that Big Man could swim in the Gulf for a little bit.) The same drive took my older sister B 12 hours to do. She arrived all frazzled from the traffic and the long drive.

We unloaded all our stuff from our refrigerator into the fridge in my brother and sister-in-law's rec room. Then B did the same. Later, my sister-in-law's brother and his wife arrived, also with the contents of their kitchen, and then her dad, with the stuff from HIS. All told, we ended up stuffed with the food from 4 families, some of it defrosting. We've been eating royally -- we began with pork tenderloin and pasta on Saturday night, hot dog for lunch and red beans and rice with sausage for dinner on Sunday, and Labor Day we ate hurricane thanksgiving, with roasted turkey and crabmeat stuffing and macaroni and cheese. Monday is barbeque pork shoulder, since that was also defrosting. (Big Man and I were lucky -- the new ice chest worked great, and none of our food had defrosted or was in the process of defrosting when we arrived.)

Hurricane Gustav's bands moved into this section of Florida early Monday morning -- along with tornado watches. The wind was terrific, the rain pounded periodically as the bands went through, and the water rose in the boat canal behind the house up to the sidewalk. The metal roof in the sunroom/rec room began to leak like crazy, all of us moving the furniture around to avoid the wet spots. The closest tornado to us passed 10 miles from where we were. The sky remained heavily clouded all day, with rain becoming increasingly less frequent. Tuesday there was still tornado warnings and predictions of heavy thunderstorms all day.

We spend our time reading, doing jigsaw puzzles, playing computer solitaire (the house is now home to 4 laptops), watching TV, arguing politics, and playing Scrabble -- things we might have been doing anyway on a rainy Labor Day weekend, even without a hurricane.

News on the TV tells us that power is out in widespread areas in the city, and there's scattered reports of wind damage to roofs and buildings. We are expecting to get official word of when we all can go home sometime today (Tuesday), and it is expected to be some time on Thursday or maybe Friday. Schools in NOLA are closed until Monday, when hopefully, things will be back to "normal."

Things could have been way worse. We are thankful for the near-miss, for the love of family, and for all the pretty-well organized preparations back in the city (unlike 3 years ago). Our family "evacuation center" has great food, 2 bathrooms, 4 working TVs with cable service, and electric power. Things could be much worse.