(NEW ROSES,PA) -- Old habits die hard. Here it is, a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon in a small town shielded by mountains and bad highways, about 270 miles due west of Moote Pointe, NY, which is on Long Island near New York City, and was right at dead center of Hurricane Henri’s path.
The gas tank is full. The refrigerator and freezer are almost empty. There’s a new bottle of Smirnoff’s on the shelf. Every piece of dirty laundry is washed, dried and folded.
Moote Pointe Marty is in the local New Roses Mega Mart with a shopping cart full of stuff.
Batteries. Duct tape. A small radio. A few flashlights, a few candles. A car charger for the cell phone. Couple of bags of ice. A small barbecue and some charcoal. A 50-pound bag of cat litter. Chips, V8 juice, a few cans of Dinty Moore and Chef Boyardee and diced chicken breast and two family-size boxes of Total.
Harvey Checker-Outer looks at this stuff coming toward him at the register. Always good for a few laughs and a good conversation, this fella, and he asks “Camping?”
Marty says “Nah, having an address in this ZIP code and a phone in this area code is as close to camping as I get. This is hurricane prep stuff.”
For the first time in years, Harvey Checker-Outer is speechless. But only briefly. “Hurricane? We don’t get hurricanes here. What are you talking about?”
Marty: “Ya never know. Plus, I’ve done this a time or two and you get used to it. You hear ‘hurricane” and “east coast” on the radio. You see some weather reporter standing in front of a big map that goes from Florida to Maine and has all those splotches of reds and yellows on it, you go buy this kind of stuff.”
At home, the computer is on. It’s set to the New York Times animated hurricane tracker map. You watch Irene amble up the coast. You switch to the paper’s “neighborhood by neighborhood evacuation orders” map. You try to get a live picture from the old street in Moote Pointe and you wait it out.
Nothing much.
In olden days, Marty was usually working during storms. Nature of the job. It’s what news guys do. But still, old habits die hard.
Shrapnel:
--Henri didn’t hit New York even close to hard as the predictions said it would. But weather forecasting is as much an art as a science. So don’t kill the messenger, just be thankful he/she/it was wrong.
--Of all the stupid words and phrases news people applied to this storm was “Henri unleashed his fury.” First off, you can leash a dog, but not a fury. Second, it isn’t fury in the first place, it’s wind and rain. And they can’t be “leashed” or unleashed either.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Any questions? wesrichards@gmail.com
© WR 2021
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