The day He arrived: remembering Hugo
By David Farrow
Where were you when Hugo hit?
I awoke that September morning to sunshine and a pleasant breeze. My new bride was off to work and after putting everything in ship shape, I sat in my living room and was cursing at Phil Donehue when the phone rang.
Charleston Place was calling! After being in business for two years, Charleston Place was calling me to give a tour! Of course, it was cruel joke. Anybody with any sense was beating tracks up I-26. Still, I was at the Market and people everywhere were haplessly sandbagging their stores. I decided to ride my bike down High Battery.
It was low tide, but the water level was higher than high tide on a harvest moon. It was at that point that I knew things might not turn out so well, after all.
One has to remember that the last hurricane that hit Charleston dead on was Gracie thirty years before. It turned out that Gracie was an ill-tempered child; Hugo was a psychotic teenager with an automatic weapon. No one knew this at that particular point.
As I had spent the two days before boarding up windows and all the other proper stuff I was to do, the rest of my day was spent looking for coverage of the storm. I recall watching Perry Mason on WTAT, which at that point had no news department. Bob Waters came on with a graphic and explained that we were to be hit dead on. Well, I’d been through Gracie when I was six, so– what fun.
Finally, at 4pm if I remember correctly, Mayor Riley came on and told people that it was too late to leave. I don’t remember exactly the text of the speech, but I do remember his last words, “May God have mercy on your soul.”
I thought to myself, this might be a tad more serious than at first blush.
Well, there are certain things you can’t do a thing about, and my thought back in those days was that a man had to believe in something, and I believed I would have a drink; a very strong drink if the truth be told. My wife got home from work, and she started supper like any other night. I went across the street to my best friend’s apartment and had a couple of pops with his family. Still, even though the sky was getting funky, we fiddled while Rome burned.
I went home, had supper, and decided to walk around to check things out. I was walking by the Jenkins Mikell house on the corner of Montagu and Rutledge when I saw a huge Magnolia tree bend all the way down to the ground.
Hmmm … Might be time to saunter on back home.
Well, we watched television as long as we could, then the transformers went out, emitting a strange feral sound which combined eerily with the green light seeping from the boiling, pitch-black sky. We had a Sony Watchman, so we continued to try to get as much information as we could.
I want to comment on the television coverage. One certain station, which I will not name, made a big deal out of how they stayed on the longest to give us unfortunate storm victims constant updates. There was really no way for anyone to really know this as most people had already lost electricity. The network feed was long gone, so we were treated to the zany antics of “Three’s Company” while all hell broke loose outside. I don’t recall seeing anything that looked faintly like a weatherman before they, too, lost power.
A thought occurred to me. If this had been the Apocalypse, this is how it would end. As incoming ICBMs were on their way, we would be treated to uproarious re-runs of “Carter Country”, and somehow I found this fitting.
There are some things over which we have no control. One is nuclear war. Another is a devastating hurricane.
Right now as this is being written on Labor Day, 2009, the Atlantic is quiet. There are no low pressure systems lingering off Cape Verde. That’s not to say nothing will happen this year (The Beaufort hurricane of 1893 was in October).
Everyone here says we are due for a hurricane. We are due for an earthquake. I would argue, not so. The odds are 50/50. We’ll either be hit, or we won’t.
Make no mistake, we will get hit. It’s just another example of nature batting last.
Read David Farrow’s regular column at www.thecharlestontimes.com
