Growing Up Southern: August 31, 2017

Folks from different places see life differently. Take storms. Inland, they are like redneck sex, over in seconds and “Let’s eat!” That’s assuming the kitchen is still standing. On or near the sea, they are like being forced to ride the entire length of Interstate 40 with Donald Trump talking all the way. It seems the agony will never end.

I’ve been in a few fair blows, nothing labeled a hurricane. One reached the status of “tropical storm,” and if it wasn’t a hurricane, I never want to be in one. And we sailed through a storm at sea in the old USS Hunley, out in what they call “The Bermuda Triangle.” I thought that was kind of neat, for Jimmy Huddleston, Sidney Bussey, Carl Ferguson and I pretty much had the fantail to ourselves before it got too bad. Everyone else was inside hugging a “head” if they could find one vacant. We were eating kipper snacks and channeling old John Paul himself.

The old girl was seaworthy, but she had a pronounced fondness for rolling. Men who had bounced across the Pacific in seagoing tugs or LSTs grew ashen at times when it seemed like she wouldn’t stop on a particularly bad roll. But, she always did. She’d shudder like a drunk with the DTs and start back the other way. Port to starboard. After decks up. Starboard to port. After decks down. Port to starboard. After decks up. Starboard to port. After decks down. Get the picture? Oh, go ahead. I don’t mind waiting.

They finally chased us inboard and closed the decks. It went on like that for two days. Imagine trying to sleep in conditions like that.

Out in the heartland, we deal with tornadoes. They are swift, deadly, and totally capricious. When one hit our community in the 1940s, it obliterated the houses on either side of our store/home. Our only damage, and it was minor, resulted from a large oak tree blown over in the back yard.

A religious person might assign some spiritual hand to all this. From our undamaged grocery store, my father gave away goods to whomever needed it and never asked for payment. Oddly, he didn’t wait for the city to tell him he needed to. He just did it, and bankrupted himself in the process. A headline praising his actions carried the subheading, “George [von Tungeln] said, ‘If you need it come and get it.’” I guess those were different times, sort of the “prosperity gospel” in reverse.

Later, I recall a man relating his story to a group gathered around the old pot-bellied stove my dad had in the store. The man had gotten his family to safety, and returned alone after the storm had passed. His home, barn, and other buildings had completely disappeared. He described walking around where they had once stood and finding the only undamaged thing still standing. It was a large board resting on brick supports, a make-believe cookstove his daughters had set up to “play kitchen.”

The storm had not even disturbed the inverted jar lids the kids had used to make mud pies.

Yes, storms can be capricious. For 32 people in our community, that particular one was also deadly.

Carl Ferguson and and the author.
Shipmates tried and true.