Piles of chain-sawed trees make Beaumont, Texas, neighborhoods look like log yards.
The above photo was taken today, a good 23 days after Hurricane Rita came calling like a scorned, drunken aunt bent on mayhem. Big piles of brush and debris line curbsides all over town even though contractors removing it for the city are pretty efficient.
Most area schools kids are back in class today reading, writing and being their obnoxious little selves while many of their dads and moms are back at work.
“Normalcy.” That’s a word you hear a lot on TV news and read in the local paper. People are seeking normalcy in their lives. It is the most overused word around here since “closure.” But it is a perfectly accurate description of what many desperately crave after the storm interrupted the hell out of their lives.
Now there is a Tropical Storm Wilma out there headed for Yucatan or the Gulf of Mexico or wherever. It’s way too early to get a bead on it. As many of you will recall it was difficult to figure exactly where Rita was going to make landfall. First the weather forecasters thought some 250 miles southwest of me near Corpus Christi. Then each day the prediction seemed to bring it closer to the Upper Texas Coast where I live. It was only the day before the storm made landfall that there was confidence enough in where Rita would come ashore for local officials to order a mandatory evacuation. When it finally made landfall it turned out that where the eye came ashore was only part of the equation because the storm was so large.
It was ferocious as well. And the storm itself was really the only cool part of the entire experience.
Now I know how that must sound, that the hurricane was cool. A friend of mine who stayed here in Beaumont because of work and I had this conversation after I returned. And I pretty much agreed with her that the actual storm was quite exhilarating. My friend even characterized the experience as “fun.”
I actually slept for a few hours at my brother’s home before the most intense part of the hurricane made its way to us, 80 or so miles away from the coast. I think specifically it were the three electric transformers somewhere in the neighborhood exploding in quick succession that roused me from sleep.
Watching from inside the house the trees swaying and falling amid the driving rain was mesmerizing. We had a radio on but I couldn’t tell you what was said during those entire early morning hours. The constant roar of the wind also was most memorable. “I don’t think I ever have been so tired of hearing the wind blow,” my brother told me that morning.
As difficult as it was to see the damage just after the storm and even a couple of weeks later, I can only describe those visions as “awesome,” as in “shock and awe.”
We were visited by a force of nature that lets mortal man know he isn’t the only entity that can wreck large portions of the Earth. Whether you see it unleashed by God, or a higher power or just the cosmos itself, it’s one hell of a show. It’s like visiting nature’s amusement park for the thrill ride of your life.
Fun though it was, I still hope Wilma will go elsewhere. I think most of us along the Gulf coast have had about all the fun we can take for this year.
