IKE - We had it Pretty Easy

On September 12th around 8:50 p.m., I got a phone call from my dear friend in B.C. Vancouver Island. She was worried about us and the approaching storm that banged at our Texas gulf coast door. We talked briefly and I told her that the storm had not even begun to blow, and tried to convince her that we were well prepared and that we were safe. So far, we were experiencing the calm before the storm. Come on, Ike! Show us what you’ve got! After we’d chatted I hung up the phone, at which time the power immediately went out. IKE had arrived, cutting us off from any form of outside communication. The stillness was eerily chilling, even in the Texas warm evening. It was like in the movies, when an intruder cuts all power to the house before entering to do evil. You want to hold your breath and hide in a corner.

We live about 26 miles north of Houston, about 5 miles west of I-45. During the hurricane season we typically lose a few days of power, and those few days are not always strung together. We keep our supplies in the garage updated, fill big water jugs, plenty of extension cords and flashlight batteries, make sure both vehicles are filled with gas as well as several large gas cans; about 36 gallons. We never experienced they eye of the storm this time. It went east of us, so we didn’t get a break. It just blew all night and most of the next day.

We have one large generator that is capable of running two refrigerators, a freezer, a portable air conditioner for the bedroom, 2 oscillating fans, a small portable television and the coffee pot. We keep this generator running all night, turn it off in the morning and run it on and off throughout the day to keep the food cold and/or frozen. This year Roy bought a small Honda 2000 generator to run in the cool mornings. It’s really quiet, runs for 15 plus hours on a gallon of gasoline, and it enables us to watch the news, make coffee and to have a light to read the paper by. There is a smaller, older generator that we have kept, just in case.

In the very wee hours of September 13th, I heard Roy get up to let the dog out and sit on the protected area of the patio. The temperature had dropped some, and it was still blowing and raining. I found a flashlight and carefully padded through the living room and kitchen to the patio. We pumped up the Coleman camp stove in the garage. On the first morning without electricity we made our traditional hurricane Cowboy Coffee. This is coffee made in the old blue speckled camping coffee pot. You just dump some coffee grounds in the pot and boil the hell out of it and drop in a few ice cubes every now and then to keep it from boiling over on the camp stove. After it settles, everyone comes around to the smell of coffee at the Anderson Arms Campground. “Y’all got the Cowboy Coffee ready yet?” After that, we just set up the coffee pot hooked up to the generator. We sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and waiting for daylight to see what kind of damage Ike might have brought us. The storm had raged all night, and was still blowing and raining. As daylight filtered through, we watched trees lean over at impossible angles. We could also see that there had been no visible damage to the house. We did lose part of a fence, and a couple of tree tops had broken off and fallen right in front of the dining room window. As we looked out the back window, we could see a squirrel curled up under the eaves of the covered deck. I’m sure it’s nest had been blown away. We were so lucky.

On that same day, we got a call from some friends that were out of the country in Paris on business. A neighbor had called them to say that a huge tree had fallen on their house. He wanted to know if we would go have a look. As they live some distance away from our house, we called some mutual friends that lived close by to see if they wanted to go with us to have a look at the damage to the house with the tree on it. The bunch of us loaded up into one vehicle and headed out. Everywhere we went looked like a war zone. There was so much damage….downed power lines, trees down everywhere. Debris was blown all over the place, and the wind and rain was still going on. Granted, it was the tail end of the storm, but no less unpleasant. We dodged trees and power lines on the way there. When we got there, it was as had been described. A huge pine tree had landed on the house, and had settled on the roof of their bedroom closet. What a mess. All we could do for them was to take some pictures. We called them to report what we’d seen. They would be on their way home on Tuesday.

Gas was at a premium at first, and we had to forage for fuel as well as try to find food. Three days after the storm, we got up at 4:00 a.m., loaded our gas cans into my truck and headed north up I-45. There was a full moon, but we didn’t see any gas stations open yet. After about 15 miles, we exited and headed west to see what was out that way. As we approached some lights, we realized that we were in Magnolia. There was a Kroger open, and the gas pumps were open and there wasn’t a line. We’d made it in time. I walked up to the store to refresh our coffee cups. The store was open for business, and they actually had some food. We loaded up stuff to put into the refrigerator. After that, we didn’t have to go far for gas. The stores around us were pretty depleted.

Everyone in the neighborhood contributed to meals for us all. We cooked out and served dinner a couple of times at our house on the deck. In other subdivisions, block parties kept spirits up as well. Some friends of ours gave a great block party. We played dominos while our hostess made rounds of the guests giving shots of various flavors of tequila. They’d been to Mexico and had brought back a lot of tequila. She had decided that she needed to clean out the liquor cabinet. Roy and I were the only ones that did not participate in the tequila shots sporting event. It sure was entertaining though, and we won the dominos game. I guess we’re a nation of spoiled Baby-Boomers.





Our clean up was only difficult for just two people to clean up. It took us three days, and then only because on the second day, I drew a line. We got the front yard sawed up, cleaned up and bagged up on the first day, but it did take from sun up to sun down. On the second day I declared a limit to two people our age. We finished up in the back yard on day three. There were piles of debris on both sides of the front yard that were every bit of 5' high by6' wide and 20' long. It's still out there, waiting to be picked up. No doubt it will take some time.

About 7 days into this, I started to feel an old toothache returning. I’d been babying this tooth for years, hoping that I could just put off the inevitable for a while longer. Finally, I called my dentist, an old school friend actually that I had gone to high school with. They took me that morning, and I had the luxury (if you could call it that) of lying in a dentist chair in the air conditioning while Jim pulled the offending tooth. I’d somehow cracked the roots of the tooth, and it couldn’t be saved anymore. Needless to say, I was pretty sore after the anesthetic wore off, but I did take my friend, Donna up on taking a couple of loads of clothes to her house to wash. I had been washing and hanging them out. They got their electricity back on several days before we did.

This is the longest we’ve gone without power. Our electricity was restored on Sunday, September 28th, on day 16. It’s been an inconvenience, and I don’t care how much or how little one is suffering, boredom does set in. There are still some 100,000 people still without power, some of whom are friends close by. Our friends Madolyn and Ralph just got their power on last night. They were out for 18 days. They lost 13 trees, but oddly enough, there was no damage to their house.

There are so many people who have suffered so much more and lost so much more than we have. The ones who evacuated Galveston and Bolivar would have lost more than possessions had they stayed. As it was, most of them lost everything; not just their homes and possessions, but businesses. Most of that will more than likely be re-built. What I do NOT understand AT ALL is the people who stayed, and particularly the ones who stayed and subjected their families…their children to such a fate. When there is a hurricane headed this way, it only makes sense to get the hell out of there. Some didn’t, and many died.

Yesterday, I was reveling in the luxury of having all of my appliances to clean with when the power surged a couple of times and again went out. I called CenterPoint and then went outside to plant some fig ivy along the fence by our driveway. By the time I finished this little project, the power was back on again. And again I count my blessings and feel such gratitude for the life I’ve been given.

We’re back!