Note: This is my darling hubby Chet's "rebuttal" to my blog entry about waiting for hurricane Gustav.
Preparing
for Gustav: The Real Story
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| Preparing for Gustav by Chet Rzadkiewicz |
My darling
wife Carol’s “Waiting for Gustav,” though amusing, contains so many factual
errors, overstatements, and outright fabrications that I feel compelled to set
the record straight. I have, however, changed a couple of names to protect, as
they say, the innocent.
The story
begins two days before Gustav roared into Louisiana on Labor Day at around 9:30
a.m. (CDT) near the village of Cocodrie in Terrebonne Parish. Except for the
fact that a hurricane was bearing down on us, it was a rather typical Saturday
for Carol and me.
I rose from
bed at 10 a.m.—not 11:30 a.m., as Carol wrote—admittedly rather late in the
morning, but for a good reason. Carol, you see, had kept me up until nearly 5 a.m.
“Why?” you ask. I’m a gentleman, so I won’t explain but will simply leave the
matter, dear reader, to your imagination.
Still groggy,
I put on gym shorts and went to the kitchen where I poured myself a cup of
coffee, grabbed the metro section of The Advocate—yes, Carol’s paper of
choice, but surely not mine—not the sports section—as Carol claimed—which
generally "sucks moose," as my sister Pat likes to say, and headed for the living
room. Once settled on the sofa, I turned on the TV, not to ESPN—as Carol
asserted—but to the Weather Channel to hear the latest dope on, you guessed it,
Hurricane Gustav.
I‘d opened
the paper to the editorial page and taken perhaps two sips of coffee when my
darling stormed into the room. She was wearing sandals and a faded blue
bathrobe—her “writing robe,” she calls it—fastened at the waist by a belt I’d
fashioned from a stretched-out jockstrap. An unlit cigarette dangled beneath
her upper lip, and she was holding a beer mug half-filled with white wine.
Hmm. Was it
her first, second, or, even third drink of the morning?
Please don’t
get me wrong. Normally Carol doesn’t have her first glass of wine until much
later in the day, and rarely before three in the afternoon. But she was in her
pre-hurricane mode, meaning she was flipping out.
I put on the
captions and muted the TV.
Carol removed
the cigarette from her lips and glared at me.
Cranking up
for a tirade? I braced myself.
“Well, are
you just going to sit there all day?” she said. “That hurricane is coming. We
have to get ready for it, now. Gus and Dolly will be here any minute. They’re
bringing that generator Gus told us about.”
Good old Gus,
coming through with a generator, as promised. He and his wife Dolly, each over
60, are our neighbors and close friends.
C’mon, dress
up and get to work,” she said.
“We have
forty-eight hours, give or take,” I said. It was the first thing the dude on
the Weather Channel said after I’d turned it on.
“How do you
know when it’s coming? So now you’re a psychic.”
“Be cool. I
have a plan.”
“A plan? Now
I know we’re in deep doo-doo.”
Bug, our
kitten, poked his furry, gray little head out from under the sofa as if to see
what the fuss was about. When he spotted Carol, he yowled then shot back under
the sofa.
“Look, darling,”
I said. “As soon as I eat something, I’m going out for sandbags and gas. You
just hang around here and do whatever needs to be done.” We always clean the
house together on Saturdays. But with a hurricane on the way and much else to
do, we’d cut some corners with the housecleaning today.
I didn’t want
to freak her out even more by telling her what the weather guy had just said,
that Gustav might drop nearly a foot of rain on Lafayette, making it likely
that the waterline would reach our front and back doors. So, sandbags were a
priority. Of course, going over to the sand distribution center and filling the
bags would take a while, and I knew I’d have to spend a good bit of time
searching for gas, since it quickly becomes scarce before a hurricane. We needed
it for our two vehicles—we hadn’t yet decided which one we’d take if heavy rain
from Gustav forced us to evacuate—and the generator.
Just then,
Beanbag, or Beanie for short, our basset hound, began barking, indicating that
Gus and Dolly had arrived. They were on our patio, which rests under a metal
canopy and is surrounded by a three-and-a-half foot high wooden fence. Gus was
positioning the generator while Dolly tried to shoo Beanie off the patio.
I walked out
of our French doors onto the patio and exchanged pleasantries with them. I also
thanked Gus for bringing the generator, which he had filched from a neighbor
whom Gustav had frightened into evacuating. (The neighbor would return to town
sooner than expected, a major complication. but presently irrelevant.)
But where was
my darling? I guessed she’d gone to reload. Seventeen years of marriage and she
still hid her wine bottles, a carry-over from her first marriage. Her ex was a
teetotaler who had strongly disapproved of Carol’s drinking.
Soon Carol
came out on the patio, a full mug in hand, and I went back inside for I had a
lot to do.
After putting
on my work clothes, I went to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich, which I
ate in the den in front of the French doors. From there, I could see nearly the
entire patio and much of the back yard.
Gus turned
over the patio chairs while Dolly gathered wind chimes and yard tools—anything
that could become a dangerous projectile in a hurricane—and brought them to the
patio. Carol, waving her mug, appeared to be supervising.
I couldn’t
hear what anyone was saying because Beanie, who was running from one end of the
patio fence to the other, continued to bark. Several years ago, Beanie had
accompanied Carol and Bogart—our recently departed spirit dog—home from a walk.
We’d searched hither and yonder for Beanie’s owner or owners. We’d placed signs
in key locations, called local veterinarians, checked lost-and-founds, to no
avail. By the time our search ended, we’d concluded that Beanie had been abandoned,
and we had a good idea why: he barked constantly, a loud, obnoxious bark; he
dug holes; and, even by dog standards, he was stubborn, selfish, and vulgar.
Yet, aside from these shortcomings, he was a fine pet.
But I’ve
digressed.
Soon Dolly
began stacking everything she’d gathered against the right side of the patio
fence. Meanwhile, Gus concentrated on the largest objects that needed
attention. The first was the swing in the back of the yard. Gus unhitched the
seat and set it down on the ground. Then he turned the frame over on the seat.
That way, the swing would stay put when the strong hurricane gusts blew through
the yard. Then he headed for Beanie’s doghouse.
I glanced
over at Carol. She had put her mug down on the plastic chest that contained
Beanie’s bones and dry food. Her attention seemed focused on a rake that Dolly
had leaned up against the fence. When she reached for it, she stepped on the
prongs. Thwack. She recoiled from the
blow to her forehead and muttered something I couldn’t make out but could
probably guess. Then she repositioned herself and reached out again, but
stumbled forward, once again stepping on the prongs. Thwack. This time she rubbed her forehead, scrunched up her face,
and extended her hands, aiming for the rake.
It made me
think of Charlie Chaplin and I Love Lucy. It also demonstrated that my
darling had crossed the line between tipsy and loaded. That mug on the chest
was likely her third or fourth, I figured.
Before Carol
could complete that third try for the rake, Dolly snatched the malevolent tool
and set it down in the corner with the other yard tools. Then she pointed at
Gus, who was dragging the doghouse—a large, round thing—to the patio.
The purpose
of the patio fence, a recent addition to our backyard, is to keep Beanie, who
can be quite destructive, off the patio. But there was no way we were going to
leave him out in the open, protected only by his doghouse, in a hurricane.
The problem
was fitting the doghouse through the gate, something no one had tried until
now.
Gus moved it
into position while Carol held the gate open. He pushed, but the darn thing was
stuck between the gateposts. He looked over at Carol and said something. When
he shoved again, Carol, bent over and, clutching the opening of the doghouse,
heaved. But it didn’t budge.
Carol readied
herself for another try, and it was at that moment that I noticed something.
Her belt had come undone. I wondered what, if anything, she had on underneath
her robe.
This time,
Carol yanked hard, and most of the doghouse slid through the posts. But the
effort threw her back and her robe burst open. And there it was, the answer to
my question.
Gus’s jaw
dropped and he stared, but only for an instant. Then he spun around and began
shouting.
I could
almost make out what he was shouting because Beanie had finally quit barking. I
moved closer to the French doors and craned to get a better view of Gus, and I
saw why. Beanie had clasped his front paws around one of Gus’s legs and was
doing what untrained, uncouth male dogs are wont to do.
Hell if I
could remember why Carol and I had never gotten the critter neutered.
Dolly, who
had disappeared from my field of vision, now reappeared, rambling past Carol.
Then she clambered over the doghouse and lunged at Beanie.
Suddenly, I
sensed a presence and glanced down. Bug was sitting beside me, staring at the
patio.
I checked my
watch. Nearly one o’clock. It was getting late. Since everything appeared to be
pretty much under control, I decided it was time to set off on my errands.
I’ll spare
you most of the details of the rest of my afternoon. Suffice it to say, I spent
much time driving around, searching for a gas station that was still selling
regular unleaded fuel.
The most
difficult part of my afternoon occurred during my stop at the sand distribution
center in Youngsville. After a twenty-minute wait, I was allowed to back my
vehicle into a spot across from a humongous mound of sand. The guy in charge said I could fill as many
as twenty bags, which I did in the hot sun with the temperature at 94º. I
estimated that each bag weighed between 35 and 40 pounds.
After I
loaded them into the bed of Carol’s Tundra, unlike most everyone else, I
followed the directions I was given and moved the vehicle away from the mound
without having fastened the bags. I soon found a shaded area where I stopped
and performed that chore, which took a lot longer than I’d expected.
When I
returned home, I immediately unloaded the sandbags from the truck and
positioned them around the front and back doors as well as the door to our
utility room under the carport. It was going on six when I finally went inside.
I walked into
the den where Carol was sleeping on the sofa, her favorite resting spot.
I moved
quietly and looked around. I saw that she had dusted, vacuumed, mopped, and
cleaned the bathrooms. Heck, she had even taken out the garbage.
But there was
more. In the dining room, on Carol’s souvenir bench from Underground Atlanta, I
saw all the items she’d collected since the last hurricane: battery-driven
fans, lights, and lanterns. Alongside them was a medium-sized box containing
batteries of various sizes.
All that, and
then there was the generator.
We had never
been so well prepared for a hurricane. I was almost tempted to say, “Okay,
Hurricane Gustav, bring it on!”
But that
would have been stupid because a hurricane is a lot like a war inasmuch as you
can’t predict the damage it’s going to cause. And a truly rational person would
never desire either one.
Thinking
about such things, I recalled something I’d overheard that afternoon while
waiting to pre-pay at the gas station where I’d filled up the Tundra and two
five-gallon cans for the generator. A young woman told another that she had
been praying that Gustav would strike somewhere else along the Gulf Coast,
Mississippi or Alabama, for example. That struck me as wrongheaded, not to
mention immoral, because what she had actually done was ask God to inflict
nature’s fury and destruction on the people of another area. I would like,
however, to give that young woman the benefit of the doubt and assume that she
simply hadn’t thought things through.
Nope. If a
hurricane was coming our way, it was meant to be, and we had to deal with it as
best we could.
I crept back
into the den. A big toe stuck out from under the afghan that covered Carol, and
Bug, perched on an armrest, swatted half-heartedly at the toe whenever it
twitched.
Carol’s mouth
was open, emitting a soft but steady snore. Nevertheless, she looked rather
angelic. Over the years, she’d added a wrinkle or two, but she was still my
bride, and I loved her more than ever.
© 2008 Chet
Rzadkiewicz
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| Chet Rzadkiewicz |
A
graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo, Dr. Chester M.
Rzadkiewicz has been affiliated with the History and Geography Department at
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette since 1995. In 1996, he was awarded the Southwestern Historical Association’s
Walter Craddock Prize for Best Paper in European/Asian History for
"N.A. Polevoi and the Moscow Telegraph: A Neglected Chapter in the
History of Early Russian Liberalism.” He is also the author of, among other works, “N.A.
Polevoi's Moscow Telegraph and the Journal Wars of 1825-1834,"
which was published in Literary Journals in Imperial Russia (Deborah
Martinsen, ed.; 1998; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 64-87). Currently, however, Dr. Rzadkiewicz is
working on an historical account of Moscow Telegraph, an early 19th
century Russian journal, as well as a sociological and historical study, The
Higher Immorality: C. Wright Mills, American Ideology, and the Cold War, in
addition to a novel, Red Garters, about the impact
of gossip on lives in Small Town, America.
