Aunt Martha & the Cat 5 Hurricane
Some of you gentle readers may remember last September’s minor saga of Martha, beloved aunt of my wife, Lisa, and the dear soul’s less than urgent efforts to get out of Tallahassee, Fla., ahead of a Category 4 hurricane.
Here is a little background from last year . . .
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“With Category 4 Hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida, we managed to convince Lisa’s Aunt Martha to get out of Tallahassee this morning on one of the last flights before the airport closed. It was a close call.
Martha knows better. After all, her husband, our crew-cut rocking, robin’s egg blue cardigan wearing, Florida State football watching Uncle Charles, who passed last year, was a decades-long hurricane specialist for the National Weather Service. He forecast tropical cyclones when all they had to guide them were paper maps and charts – no computers or satellite images. He worked for a while with John Hope. Remember John Hope, the now retired, no-nonsense former hurricane authority for the Weather Channel, who would calmly deliver expert storm analyses without getting all Jim Cantore about it? Uncle Charles was that kind of guy – a lovable old poop who knew his stuff.
So, Aunt Martha knows her hurricanes but that’s the thing with certain Southern women; they know they need to evacuate before the big ones hit but they always think there is time to “tidy up the house” (deep clean the kitchen) and “straighten the beds” (wash and change linens, scrub bathrooms, put out little seashell shaped soaps picked up on vacation), get their hair done and check on neighbors and people from church. Regardless of the time or the Weather Channel’s cone of uncertainty, no one can make these beloved children of God move any faster.”
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Well, here we are again. Another hurricane is approaching and dear aunt has decided, late in the game, that the storm’s winds could topple the large trees in her yard and that she would prefer to be elsewhere if they did.
We offered our place as a refuge. She bought a plane ticket to Houston, two days before the storm. The only ticket available was first class. It cost approximately a million dollars but could be canceled. Maybe, she figured, two days before the biggest hurricane ever expected to make landfall in her area, she could just get a hotel room in Birmingham and drive up there and maybe she would have no trouble getting gas. Maybe, she hoped, she could fill her car’s tank before long lines appeared at the gas stations (too late, dear). My wife chose not to remind her aunt that perhaps she could have evacuated before the highways filled bumper to bumper with vehicles loaded with families, medications, bottled water and peanut butter crackers. No worries, Martha said. She was keeing an eye on the storm and weighing her options. With landfall imminent, she would sleep on it.
We can report, finally, that, driven by the extravagant purchase of the refundable plane ticket, she canceled it, as any frugal Baptist would, found a reasonable hotel room, accepted an invitation to stay at a cousin’s house a little farther away from the coast, canceled the hotel room, and, last night, made her precious way, no doubt with Jesus looking out for her, to relative safety, bless her heart.
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Aunt Martha is one of a seemingly vanishing breed of Southern women who never forget where they were raised.
My favorite Aunt Martha quote: “Where I come from, we didn’t have Catholics. We had Baptists, Presbyterians and heathens.”
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.