Blogarithms

This is an old photo of my son and me. It's one of my favorites because a fly had landed on his nose, thus the expression. When the photo was new, the fly could be seen flying away above his head.

MAIDEN — Hugo was on his way.

My career hadn’t landed me at The Gazette yet. I was,  however, an eight-year member of The Fourth Estate. During the day before Hugo, all news media was warning that the storm was going to reach so far inland that it would be pounding at our front doors.

I don’t think anyone around me was quite prepared for what came that night.

My son and I lived alone. My parents lived two city blocks away, which gave me a sense of security for most things but even they couldn’t save my son and me from a hurricane.

It wasn’t the first one I had been through. I was so young and had lived in so many states that I don’t remember which one it was. I wondered if it was Hurricane Hazel behind our car the night I sat backward on my knees in the back seat of a 1955 two-toned green Pontiac with an Indian head as the hood ornament. My mother assures me it couldn’t have been Hazel. Our family spent the night in a National Guard Armory that night. My mother is surprised that I remember the event.

In preparation for Hugo, I informed my then-16-year-old son what was coming and told him, “if anything happens, if you get scared, hear noise or anything, grab your mattress and pull it in the closet or bathtub behind or over you. Stay there  until it’s over no matter what happens.”

I was so antsy, I couldn’t sleep. I kept checking to see if the son was asleep. I worried about flying glass. First grade in Dover, Del., prepared me to worry about flying glass. We had air raid drills.

There was way too much quiet outside — eerily so.  At midnight, I went to the front door, and hearing nothing opened the front door and stuck my head out. The air was still, the sky was black but there was no hint of an approaching storm, as far as I knew.

Again, I tried to sleep, but to no avail. A few hours later, I again opened the front door. To my surprise, a section of my neighbor’s roof was lying in my front yard. It was still dark, and I had heard nothing.

I must have fallen asleep after that. I woke up, turned on the TV and learned how many people were without electricity. News reports were showing downed trees, homes torn apart and power lines down everywhere. Traffic lights were out. My neighbor’s roof had disappeared from my yard. 

The next thing I knew, the general manager at the newspaper where I worked was on the phone, telling me not to try to come to work. I had to know why. The answer I received was the power lines down vs. my safety (I did appreciate it but I’m a better driver than that, knock on wood), and the newspaper had no electricity. It was in the dark and the press won’t run without electricity.
But I’m a member of The Fourth Estate. I felt like the often falsely cited US Postal Service creed:  “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” 

I went to work anyway.

What people at the newspaper didn’t realize was that I had an old manual Royal typewriter at my desk. I had candles and holders in my drawer. It’s not that I was prepared for what was coming, I just had those things. I got in there and did the day’s obituaries, anything else I could do for others who couldn’t get there. The general manager and I went to the Sheriff’s Department to find out anything we could. I took my camera and took photos that showed destruction. We had enough photos for a double truck that day.

We sent everything we could to our sister paper, which hadn’t been affected by the storm. And with no electricity, we got out a paper that day.

I’m still proud of what we accomplished. That was dedication as far as I’m concerned. 

For those who don’t know, newspaper jobs can be thankless.

The icing on the cake came a few days later. I was driving through Hickory. Traffic lights were still not working. Right after I passed through an intersection, a Hickory Police officer pulled me over and started telling me I had run a red light and sped up to get through the intersection.

I was unable to respond because what would have come out of my mouth would have been very disrespectful, besides, after the way he behaved, I preferred to say it in court. And oh, I did my homework. I went back to that intersection, sat where he was sitting when I came through and shot photos, which showed that tree limbs and leaves blocked the traffic light from his vision. I called the city’s transportation engineer, who verified that the light wasn’t working that day.

I went to court with all my little goodies only for the judge to dismiss every traffic violation. A case where an officer had seen marijuana from the porch of someone’s home, entered their home and arrested them had taken up too much time that day. The judge admonished the officer to the point that if it had been me, I would have felt like crawling under the carpet.

It was the same officer who had written my citation.

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