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A Storm: Afterthoughts

OCTOBER 3, 1985

 

A careful reading of after-storm sentiment reveals that many people were disappointed over the modest level of damage done to other people. Everyone was geared up to seeing that night’s television give us gruesome details on the devastation visited on the Eastern sea-board by Gloria. It seemed only fair, after all, that Providence should distribute its displeasures with some sense of equality. The Northwest has its volcanoes, the West its earthquakes, the Midwest its tornadoes, the South and East, hurricanes.

We (my wife and I) arrived at our home just after noon on Friday, and then came the throat-catching first view of the property. The lordly weeping willow tree, planted at my direction only twelve years ago and already a bower of serene delight, contributing what seemed almost 45 degrees of the leafy profile of a leafy lawn: down, as unambiguously as though it had been winched down, its private parts torn up from the earth, exposed to the air. Alongside it a large maple, also gone. And then by the terrace, a Japanese cherry tree that seemed small and tough and sinewy enough to withstand anything, but it was gone. The beach was relatively calm, the beneficiary of a low tide.

And suddenly the sun, brilliant; the wind, dead, as suddenly as though a great switch had been thrown. “We are,” I said to my wife, “in the eye of the hurricane, and you can expect the worst to begin in about ten minutes.” The barometer in my study read 28.8. What then happened was: nothing. Suddenly the glass was at 31.00. Oh, the winds blew, but nothing you’d have noticed if the radio hadn’t been on telling you nonstop about the hurricane churning by. For some reason not explained, the tail end of the hurricane simply gave up, the full force husbanded by the leading edge. It was over.

Except that we had no electricity, a condition that began at ten that morning and lasted until five the following morning. Nineteen hours without power; translated, in our case, to nineteen hours of powerlessness.

Among my infrequent nightmares is that I should one day find myself the Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s court. You will perhaps remember the charming book by Mark Twain in which a time warp captures the Connecticut Yankee and transports him to the court of King Arthur. There, surveying the primitive charm, he introduces, well, the technology of the day of Mark Twain, which included electricity, motors, engines, and an almanac’s knowledge of natural phenomena like the date and time of a total eclipse.

My nightmare concentrates on my utter mechanical uselessness. My memory is rusty, but I am fairly certain that King Arthur, unlike the Incas who came along a thousand years later, had the wheel. I am very sorry about that because I could have taught King Arthur about the wheel. But what else? I could give him the idea for a screwdriver, but would not know how to cast one, if that is the correct word. If King Arthur had some peanuts, I could teach him to make peanut butter, but I confess I am getting close to the old saw about how if you had some ham we could have a ham sandwich, if I had some bread.

And so I reflected on the huge, continuing debt we owe for our creature comforts to the men of science, and to the engineers. Meanwhile, having no light to read by, we went to a movie. The most awful bore I can remember since last I heard a speech in the United Nations. I will give any reader who sends me twenty-five cents the name of that movie so that he can avoid it; or else I will not do so if the director whose last name rhymes with Borghese will send me a million dollars and the promise to let me see his next script sometime before the next hurricane.

Meanwhile, it is over, and it is strangely refreshing to suffer blows less than mortal, and to be reminded of how much there is to be grateful for. There is a quickening of the spirit, and we are reminded of a few sentences of Cardinal Newman: “Spring passes into summer and through summer and autumn into winter. Only the more surely, by its more ultimate return, to triumph over that grave toward which it resolutely hastens from its first hour. We mourn over the blossoms of May because they are to wither. But we know withal that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of the solemn circle that never stops. Which teaches us in our height of hopes ever to be sober. And in our depths of desolation, never to despair.”