A Foul Wind Blows

When I was ten years old my family moved forty miles inland from Tampa where we had lived since my parents made their pilgrimage from Kentucky. Though we moved to Florida five years previous to the move inland, we never had enough money to move to a neighborhood better than the one where we lived.

Dad tried everything to relocate his family to a better location but it seemed like something financially binding was always coming up at the last minute keeping him from it. He struggled for those five years trying to make a better life for his family, and it took that many years living in a housing project to save enough money to buy an acre and a half of land in the country.

His boss gave him a loan with little interest to buy the material it took for him to begin the construction of our new house.Our new community was called Durant, Florida and the population at the time was all of 200, but that's exactly what our parents wanted for their four children. They hoped for a small, close knit town where everyone knew everyone else's business.

They wanted small country schools where teachers were more likely to have one on one experiences with their students and they thought the country was the place to do it.It was terribly hard in the beginning for everyone.

My mom and two older brothers stood toe to toe with Dad building the house. Mom was everything from chief cook and bottle washer to a tool gopher. My brothers, Ronald and Jerry, carried shingles to the roof, mixed cement and did anything and everything Dad needed them to do.It didn't sound very glamorous at the time but my job was to care for my two year old brother Terry while they worked.

You can imagine all the things a two year old can get into when you're building a house, like the time he dropped an entire box of building nails down an open drain pipe the toilet was meant to sit on. It then became my job to tie a magnet on a string and go fishing, so to speak, down the pipe for all the nails. I was, after all, supposed to be keeping him from doing just that sort of thing. He wasn't a hyper child but he kept me jumping when the rest of the family was building the house.

Finally, after months of building, we were able to make the move. We were living in the city when Dad started building but would camp out weekends on the new property as he built.We were finally able to make the move complete as soon as Dad put the roof and windows in. The concrete floors were without tile, there was only two by four studding where the walls were supposed to be and, yes, we had an outhouse until the plumbing was finished.

Dad dug a well and connected an electric pump on it for our water supply then added a small room to the back of our new house for the purpose of housing the pump. It was called the pump house but actually it was used to keep anything we didn't have a place for at the time.

Neighbors were few and far between in the country but I made friends with a young girl next door who was my age and we got along really well. She had a younger brother a couple years older than Terry and our parents became friendly with their parents. Dad was trying to finish the house as he got the extra money to do so.

First, and foremost, was the plumbing. Though I can never remember her complaining about using an outhouse and carrying water from the pump. It had to have been hard on Mom. I can remember her washing our clothes in an old wringer washer that was sitting out back in the yard. She would fill it with water from the hose to do the laundry. I also remember her heating pans of water to pour in a large metal tub on the back porch so we could bathe. Yes, I'm sure Mom was glad to see the plumbing come first. Next the drywall went up and we finally had real walls.

We'd been watching the news about hurricane Donna for awhile but didn't expect to be in any real peril but the storm took a turn and was going inland toward us.

All the neighbors were going in to Tampa to the National Guard Armory where they were asking people to come. Not us...Dad stood firm, we are riding it out in our new house.

Mom was sick with worry but she finally resolved to staying home. She had all the kids staying in the living room floor instead of our bedrooms because of a big oak tree outside our windows. She was afraid of it falling on the house and killing us all in our sleep so she prayed to every saint she could think of. She did that a lot...

As if wearing a timepiece, here come Donna right on time.

The electricity went out but we had flashlights, a portable radio and jugs of water in case we needed them. I knew we were expecting the current to go out but when it actually happened I nearly had a laundry problem.

Of course this brought a barrage of attacks from my brothers which I really didn't need at the time.Now, I know everyone is familiar with the overstuffed chair in the living room that, for whatever reason, belonged to your father...only your father. I was convinced Dad's name was engraved on that old chair somewhere because if we came within five feet of it we would get fussed at.

Maybe it was because it was taboo for us but we just couldn't resist the temptation to fight over the old chair whenever we had a chance...it was as if it would perform some sort of magical spectacle for you if you were the one lucky enough to get there first.

"What are you doing? Get away from there...that's your father's chair." Mom would holler. I could never figure out why we couldn't sit in that chair even when Dad wasn't home. I still don't know why but I found myself saying the same silly things to my kids when they were growing up.

Dad sat in that old chair with the portable radio close to his ear. He listened to all updates of Donna that were broadcast and he didn't move or talk for the longest time. I guess Mother Nature gave him a call because he suddenly got up, took a flashlight, a magazine, the radio and headed for the new toilet.

While my brothers and I were fighting over who would try to get to Dad's chair first the wind became deathly quiet, the rain stopped as quickly as it started and for the first time since the storm began my brothers were actually speechless.

My mom went to the back door and opened the jalousie windows on it. It was too dark, she couldn't see anything so she opened the door for a look.That's all it took for my brothers and I to trample one another and run screaming and yelling to the kitchen to have a look ourselves. In all the commotion we woke the baby and he wasn't happy about it, to say the least. He screamed as though his throat was being cut.

As mom went into the living room to tend to him we three bolted out the back door. Hey, this was our first hurricane, we were entitled to see what it looked like. At least that was our excuse at the time. Because it was our first hurricane we didn't know about the eye of the storm. We thought the storm was over and wanted to check out the shape of the tree house, make sure our bikes were still there and do anything in general for an excuse to stay outside a little longer in the middle of the night.

We were a full acre and a half away when the storm began again and none of us were bright enough to realize the situation was dangerous. Bye that time Mom realized we were outside and began screaming for us at the back door. Oh we heard her, but we swore at the time we didn't. You know...because of all the wind and all.

We ran and skipped around the yard like a few fools when we suddenly saw our father coming after us...he didn't look as if he was coming to join the fun. We scattered like mice, scurrying in every direction we could, to get around him and into the house. I silently chuckled as I realized the boys were caught.

Dad had one in each hand by the back of their necks pushing them towards back door. It's only part of what they deserved I thought at the time. As he was pushing them towards Mom she was jerking them inside the house. Again, I snickered before I realized now he was looking for me. Oh no! I thought. I knew better than to run from him, that always made matters worse so I began my little dance of one step ahead, two steps back as he approached me.

It was to stall the inevitable..as a child,.I was too self-involved to read the worry on his face. Just as my dad reached me he swept me up into his arms and began to run towards the house. What's going on? I thought. I'm in for it now, he's running...he can't wait to get me in the house and do horrible things to me for punishment. I remember saying something stupid like, "Ronnie and Jerry made me go outside and I didn't want to either because I knew you'd be mad.

"With only about fifty yards or so to go the storm hit with full force again. My dad and I was thrown to the ground, I was nearly blown away, literally. I wasn't more than a puff of smoke at that age...should be so lucky now. Dad managed to get to his feet, grab me again and try to walk against the wind.

At that point my mother was screaming at the open back door. "SHUT THE DOOR...SHUT THE DOOR NOW!" My dad screamed to her. From that point on I don't remember a lot except my dad somehow made it to the pump house door and slung me through it.

I heard him tell Mom later it would have been useless to try to open the back door again because of the wind was too strong, if she didn't close it then she couldn't have shut it at all. He was right, it took Mom and both boys struggling to close it, and that was with Mom screaming to Saint Jude to help them.

Because we were so far inland we only got ninety mile and hour winds but it devasted the coastline and it felt full blown when it was pounding the old pump house walls.

I remember how Dad clawed and grabbed at the walls of the pump house when he tried to make it in because of all the junk and tools that were in his way. I remember some praying...a lot of cursing but we were safe for that moment. As the storm blew on I watched my father's face. Everything he was thinking and feeling at that time was written there.

How much he loved his family, the extents he would go to protect them, wondering, worrying about Mom and the boys inside the house. My train of thought was interrupted by, what sounded like, kittens crying. Don't ask me how I heard them with the noise from the wind but I did. We don't have any kittens. I thought. "Daddy...do you hear kittens?" I asked."What? No...no, I don't hear any kittens, now stay still. " He told me.

The storm raged on for a while then all was quiet and right with the world again. We slowly stood up and made our way to the back door. Mom jerked the door open and began suffocating us with hugs as her poor white face was drenched with tears. She didn't have to say a word, we knew what she was thinking. I ran in to tell my brothers about the kittens we heard in the pump house during the storm. I was stopped by my mom because they were being punished for running out into the yard. A punishment I thought I escaped at the time but found out the next morning I hadn't.

The next day we all had to help clean the yard. There was Spanish moss in every corner of the yard. There was even moss embedded a good inch into the concrete blocks of our house. The force of the storm broke many tree limbs, toppled over and blew away many other things but, for the most part, the house wasn't damaged at all.

We were distracted by the sound of a car horn suddenly, it was our neighbors returning from the National Guard Armory. Dad insisted we ride the storm out at home and he must have had some sixth sense about it because we were told the storm blew the roof off the armory and a lot of people were hurt as the result of it.
In 1960 Hurricane Donna was defined as a Category Five hurricane. Someone was watching over us. Search Wikipedia for "1960 hurricane donna" and see for yourself.

The kittens turned out to be a litter of pups. It seemed a stray dog, either in labor when the storm hit or she went into labor because the storm hit, decided to hold up in the pump house for her deliveries. We gave the pups away when they were old enough and kept the mama. We named her Lucky because she was lucky enough to find a port in the storm. I now think back to that time, more than forty years ago, and realize that was the period of time I began to grow.

Not up as much as emotionally because I began to act more responsibly about life in general. I can't help but wonder if it was Hurricane Donna and the strife we all experienced as a family or if it was just my time to grow up. It's one of those things I will never know. My brothers? Well...some of us grew up earlier than others.