By Buster McNutt
There once was a hurricane named Irma,
Whose Cat5 status sure made us squirma,
As it passed through our town,
It took power lines down,
But it sure made the dirt roads much furma!
It’s amazing how fast the dirt dust from the dirt roads comes back after a Category 5 hurricane. You would think a Cat5 would put the fear of “everlasting eternal mud” in the souls of the dirt particles, but apparently their religious mantra is more along the lines of live-and-make-dust, for after all, in the great scheme of cosmic non-organics, that is what they were put here for. Evolution being what it is (or isn’t), maybe in a million years our dirt road dirt will be farm land, potting soil, or maybe even fired up and shaped into ceramic pottery with illustrations of 300-pound men and women in those little riding carts in the line ahead of you at the grocery store with a six-inch stack of mostly-expired coupons and tattoos on their exposed body parts saying “Roll Tide,” “Gore/Lieberman 2000,” or my favorite, “This space for rent.” Really?
Now, I should admit that Irma was down to a Cat3 when it “visited” our part of North Central Florida. This means the winds it generated were limited to 90 to 110 miles an hour, which probably makes all the trees that fell in the neighborhood feel a little embarrassed. Especially the one that fell on my F-150, and pretty much totaled the paddle boat that was in the bed. That’s how we roll in Florida on the Suwannee River — we put small boats in the back of our pickups, so that if we ever do get stuck in a “storm surge,” we can just cut the boat loose, grab the fishing rod, and make the best of it. Around here fishing is not an opportunity, it is an obligation. I’m thinking I should tell the insurance adjuster that the hurricane force winds picked the boat up, slammed it against the tree causing it to carom into the back of the truck, while also weakening the tree so that it proceeded to fall on the truck, damaging the boat. I have Farmers Insurance, and I’m thinking they could use this in one of their “At Farmers we’ve seen almost everything so we know how to cover almost anything, bum-de-um-bum, bum-bum-bum” commercials.
Longtime residents here on the river still talk about the Cat3 hurricane that came through in 1997, where the dirt road dust all but disappeared after the rains stopped. They would take their video recorders and video a pickup going in front of their houses at 40 mph on the dirt road, and stirring up no dirt dust! They’d actually hold that morning’s newspaper in front of the camera to authenticate the date. At each of our annual neighborhood fish-frys, someone will always bring a copy of the video to relive The Great Dirt Road Dust-Free Event of 1997. They’ve approached the Discovery Channel about doing a documentary on this, which is not all that farfetched, since this is the same channel that produced films on “Alien Cow Tipping,” “The Search for the Elusive Multi Cell Zygote,” and who can forget, “The Upcoming Dryer Lint Time Bomb.” Scary stuff!
Our biggest problems from Hurricane Irma were no electricity and no gasoline for almost a week. The gas shortage was from the thousands of people driving through our county to escape and then return to South Florida, buying up all our gas in the process. Our gas trucks arrive with about the same frequency as Social Security checks, full moons, and getting three matching numbers and the Powerball on your lottery ticket. So to paraphrase a Jerry Reed song, “When You’re Out, You’re Out!” The electricity was out because the trees were busy falling on power lines when they weren’t preoccupied dropping on small boats in the back of pickup trucks. Our electric company service trucks had headed to South Florida to restore their power, so we had to wait for trucks from Connecticut to restore ours. I guess if Irma had made it to Connecticut, they’d be waiting on service trucks from the North Pole. Santa on a power pole …there’s a thought.
So without gas the Amish Taxi Service was doing a big business. Only they couldn’t take money, so you have to pay them in candles, or broom straws or maybe chickens — you got a better rate if you could pay in chickens. A ride into town was a chicken and a half, so if you were only going one way it could get kind of messy.
And this is yet another case where “modern” technology has done us in. All of my early cars had generators rather than alternators to charge the battery. They also had vacuum rather than electric wipers. So with a few tools, some wire, and the September 1959 copy of Mechanics Illustrated magazine, you could fire up the car and use the generator to power the refrigerator, and then the wipers to vacuum the floors. June Cleaver would be so proud!
A few of the neighbors had gas-powered generators, which of course are of limited usefulness if you can’t get gas. One guy down the road kept his boat full of about 80 gallons of gas, so he had plenty for his generator to run 24-7. He also had one of those electric cars, so he’d use his generator to power his pressure washer to wash all the dirt road dust off his electric car — this did not sit kindly with his gas- and electricity-challenged neighbors, but it still might be a coincidence that somehow one night his electric car ended up in the river. Did you know that when you put an electric car in water it is not unlike putting Alka Seltzer tablets in water, only it fizzes a little longer and I have yet to see dead fish float to the top in an Alka Seltzer glass – sure hope he had good insurance.
Bum-de-um-bum, bum-bum-bum … •
