Hurricane season
Hardly a September goes by without my parents bringing up September of 1979. Up here in Birmingham, Hurricane Frederic probably isn’t in many people’s memories, but in Mobile, it was another story. Down there, hurricanes were (and still are) a fairly common occurrence, especially around August and September, but this one was different.
Frederic washed ashore in Mobile a scant three months after I was born. My dad was at a medical conference in New Orleans in the days before the storm, and when he heard that it was headed for Mobile, he drove back home to pick up my mom and me from my grandparents’ house just outside Mobile. He arrived the day the storm hit, and needless to say, my grandmother was not too excited about her son-in-law driving her daughter and granddaughter through 50 mph winds and torrential rain.
We arrived at my other grandparents’ house closer into town just as things were really starting to deteriorate. The winds howled all night and at some point, their house lost power—power that would stay gone for almost three weeks. Three weeks of AC-less days with an infant, steamy hot Mobile air outside, and nothing to break the monotony but the sound of generators powering chainsaws to cut through fallen trees. In fact, my grandfather, in an attempt to get to the hospital to check on patients, had to ride his bike to work due to all the trees down in the neighborhood. No cars could pass through, and it was weeks before things got back to some semblance of normal.
Fast forward to September 2004, and we have Ivan. Poor Gulf Shores wore a bulls eye for this one, and the areas just to the east of Gulf Shores got the worst of it, including Perdido Key, where my family has a condo. I remember sitting in my apartment here, listening to the wind whipping the trees around outside my window, praying God would spare our little haven at the beach. He did for the most part, although it was years before all the damage was repaired. (The damage that remained on the beach in March 2005 did little to dampen my excitement as my then boyfriend Matt proposed to me on that beach.)
The very next year, Katrina hit, and everyone knows about that one. Technically, it was the very end of August, but by September, people around the world were glued to their TV sets, watching people standing on their roofs in New Orleans. Mobile was hit hard and had substantial damage from Katrina. I was living in Birmingham and preparing for our wedding, which was planned for October 1 in Mobile. As I watched the news stories, it didn’t cross my mind that Katrina could affect our wedding plans. Everything was fine until the quaint, historic hotel where we were going to stay the night of the wedding before flying out for our honeymoon called to cancel our reservation—two weeks before the wedding. We shouldn’t have complained (although we did just a little) because they were housing Red Cross workers who were in town to help storm victims. In the grand scheme of things, one couple’s wedding night just wasn’t on the top of their list of priorities!
Suffice it to say, September has proved to be a busy time of year for hurricanes, especially for those of us with ties to the Gulf. Hopefully this September, the only whirlwind I’ll be dealing with will be sleepless nights with a newborn (our new baby Sela)—with the AC pumping and trees standing tall as they should.
Lauren can be reached at laurenkdenton@gmail.com.