Ivan

Johnny Jones, 17 September 2004

In the past couple of weeks, we've been chased around by hurricanes. We left a day early for our trip South to avoid Frances? rains, then we came back a day early because of the threat of Ivan.

Daddy asked us to visit his friend across the street while we were staying in Dothan. Bill had a stroke almost three years ago which left him confined to a wheel chair, and he enjoys having people come to see him. Daddy visits him every couple of days.

Helen, his wife, was on the phone trying to get a generator to run the breathing machine Bill uses several times a day.

Their angel is "Little David." Well over six feet tall and built like a football player, David cares for Bill, and has become part of their family. He brings squash to Daddy, and takes out their garbage cans for them.

So when Chip and Daddy couldn't get the generator going, they asked Little David to come. It took awhile, because David got Bill out of his recliner and into the wheelchair so he could come, too. Daddy sat beside him in a lawn chair while David and Chip drained the gas and cleaned the plugs. The generator still wouldn't start.

The morning we left, David came over to help Chip lift the generator into Daddy's van so he could take it to a small engine shop for repair.

Daddy said he bought the generator for Hurricane Opal, almost nine years ago - October 1995. People in Dothan also talk about Frederic, the 1979 storm that was called a "Gulf Coast Nightmare." And Camille - well, that is still a terror in our minds. That 1969 storm wreaked havoc on those beautiful old mansions that rose gracefully above Highway 90 in Mississippi. Geocities.com says, "Hurricane Camille is the most intense storm of any kind to ever strike mainland America in modern history....Although rare, several other category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic, and supertyphoons in the Pacific, have been as intense. The big difference however, was Camille made landfall when at this rare intensity. The resulting property damage was so complete, that sections of the Mississippi coast seemed to vanish." It came onshore with winds of 190 mph. Whoosh!

So with this storm that was to be as intense as Charley and as big as Frances, we figured it was time to get home!

We left Tuesday, September 14th. Big headlines in Dothan read, "Ivan the Terrible." In Montgomery, equally as large type warned, "Get Ready!"

We began seeing the result of mandatory evacuations when we reached Montgomery and got on I-65. I started to point out the Florida plates. We guessed that about half of the passenger cars (including vans, pickups, and SUVs) we saw going to Birmingham were from Florida. There was little south-bound traffic. Rest areas were filled. Every time we stopped, someone from Florida or South Alabama was talking to the clerk, telling their story.

We stayed in a Holiday Inn south of Nashville, a small place called Columbia. The TV in our room stayed tuned to The Weather Channel.

The next morning at breakfast, we met an older couple from Florida headed to St. Louis to stay with their daughter. At the convenience store, a man said his Florida relatives were coming up to stay with him. The motel phone was ringing every couple of minutes, and the sign on the door said, "No more rooms available." People were walking their dogs on the lawn, vans packed full to the brim, with cartop carriers handling even more of their belongings.

I'm writing this Thursday morning. Our relatives in Dothan are safe, thank God. Daddy is without power, but as soon as Little David can come over they will start the generator. Montgomery and Birmingham may still have some problems, so later today I'll call my relatives there. Mobile, where I was born and raised, wasn't hit as hard as predicted, but Gulf Shores - wow. Our family vacationed there when I was growing up.  Now alligators are prowling the flooded streets.

Right now, I'm glad to be in Missouri. I must have said it a hundred times last night - "I'm so glad to be home!"