Bug Bites with Big Papa C

Note: This is my darling hubby Chet's "rebuttal" to my blog entry about waiting for hurricane Gustav.

Preparing for Gustav: The Real Story

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

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 19^th 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.