HERE COMES Katrina

It's 6:46 a.m. 64 degrees out and slightly foggy and bright. Patrick got up and went back to bed with Junior.

It looks like Hurricane Katrina, now downgraded to category four, is poised to fill New Orleans, one of my many home towns, with water. As a teenager growing up in Florida in the 60's I lived thru many fringes of hurricanes and of course tropical storms and literally hundreds of summer thunderstorms. In those days they were all named after women. Only one was a direct hit, and I can't remember her name. I DON'T think it was Donna, tho. Any way, It came thru Clearwater, and I rode the storm out at a buddy's house, we sat up all night having a little huricane party watching and listening to the storm. Alan's mother had a '64 mustang and it was parked in their drive way. A tree fell right behind it, and would have fallen on my car where I usually parked it, only luckily I had parked on the street for some reason or other. Anyway, I've always enjoyed watching violent storms. In Huntington, not too many years ago, I watched a tree fall on the house across the street. It fell in slow motion, iluminated by flashes of lightning. The top big branches broke thru the second story bedroom window landing on the mom and dad's bed. I ran over there in the rain, and the Dad came out and met me--They and the kids were all OK, in the basement. It was never clear to me why they were riding the storm out in the basement. Did they hide there during every thunderstorm? Maybe there was a Tornado warning in effect, I don't know. Anyway on this occasion the practice probably saved them from injury. Their front Porch roof was obliterated. So it goes. -30-