HURRICANE: The Great Home Depot Saga
5:30 p.m. Monday. Can’t get generator to run. Been working on it for two days. Hurricane coming tomorrow night.
6 p.m. Monday. We make last minute run to Home Depot. Will they still be open? Will they have any generators left to buy?
At Home Depot. Damn, no generators. Lowes is out, too. Sears closed. BUT, Home Depot manager expects a truck carrying generators to arrive within two hours. Store will be open all night until winds reach a certain speed Tuesday morning. HD bringing in big staff for overnight shift.
A small line of Slidellians waits for the promised generators, each family unit leaning on a big, orange flat-bed cart on which to place, hopefully, their generators. I snag a cart. We get in line. Slowly we come to grips with the fact we will be waiting in this line a for a long time – like waiting for Bacchus long time.
Two plastic patio chairs are sitting near us and no one is guarding them. We settle in. Steadily, more Slidellians shuffle in, ask about generators, get pointed to the line, look at the line, look at each other, and submit to the line.
The energetic and earnest store staff begins to realize they have a situation on their hands. Night is deepening, a storm is coming, people who are committed to riding out the storm can’t start their old generators, and their only hope comes through the crackly voice of a truck driver somewhere out in the pitch-black pines of Alabama, assuring our anxious store manager he is on his way. (Later, a survey of the line finds that almost all of them own one or more generators but can’t get them to work because their machines have been stored too long without being occasionally started – classic gummed-up carburetor trouble.
Whether motivated by pity or by a desire to prevent a riot, the energetic and earnest HD crew springs into action. Orange buckets are provided for our seating pleasure. Cold bottles of water are offered. Later, they looted their own patio seat cushion stock to make the upturned orange buckets more pleasurable. Two Sheriff’s deputies, armed to the teeth, stood by, speaking in low voices.
The store manager somehow came up with boxes of chocolate chip cookies. An order went out to bring up coffee pots and soon we had free java service. More water was brought up.
At 8 p.m., two hours after the original two-hour estimate, word arrives that the truck is now going to be here in two hours. Two more hours pass. 10 p.m. More news. The truck is still coming. It will be here about 2:15 a.m. Shoulders sag and children grow more cranky. Pre-teens run the aisles a little less spastically.
Speaking of children, our group of generator-bereft Slidellians number more than a hundred and the line stretches half the width of the store. Whole families wait – sometimes a group of six or more waiting for one generator. Old people, babies, little kids, teenagers and the rest on up to grandparents are determined to wait it out. The miracle of all of this is that no one complains out loud. Acceptance of any news, however disappointing, is immediate and sustained.
At some point in the night the people in line begin to take over the store. They pull parade chairs from aisle displays and take them back to their places in the line. Kids stretch out on chaise lounge cushions dropped onto the floor. The staff doesn’t say a word. The deputies ignore it.
Hour after hour we play with our phones, observe the still energetic and earnest HD staff, make trips to the bathrooms, and get to know our neighbors in the line. The old guy near me was really full of it but he told pretty good stories. Lisa goes home to take care of our dog, Shadow, but asks me to call her when the truck comes in. The night wears on.
Just as I was falling asleep in my chair, a current of electricity passes through the line. Can it be? The truck is in. It carries generators, enough for all. It is 12:30 a.m., six hours after our odyssey began. I call Lisa.
Never in the history of trucks is a truck unloaded with such speed, thanks to the energetic and earnest staff of the Slidell Home Depot. Towers of generators are paraded before us. One by one, with military precision, boxes of generators are gingerly placed on our big orange carts. We don’t care what brand they are or how much they cost. Black belt-level cash register warriors checked us out so quickly they hardly look at our credit cards. We hardly look at the receipts. Like prisoners suddenly set free, we rush our carts into the black, rarefied air of an impending storm, feeling more independent and safe than when we began our odyssey so many hours before. The storm will come, but we will not be powerless when it passes. We will be OK.
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.