I know that my reflections regarding Hurricane Ike will take a number of posts to really get out to the world what I truly felt about the storm and the aftermath of the storm. However, I will try to keep it simple and straight to the point.
First of all, Hurricane Ike was
no joke. The size of that bad boy was amazing. I think that the meteorologist reported that Ike was about 600 miles wide. Can you believe that?
Well, Ike headed straight to Galveston/Houston, just like the weather scientists were predicting. Folks were praying all over the city that the hurricane would dissipateor turn and make a victim out of another city. But I didn't pray that prayer. How can you pray a storm away from you and to someone else? That's wack, heartless, and selfish. So, my prayer was that, if the storm did indeed select Houston/Galveston as its target that we would be prepared for its entry to the third coast.
Once it was becoming more and more clear that Ike wanted to make its mark in the Houston/Galveston area, hundreds of thousands of Houston/Galveston residents made a mad dash to the stores to get water, ice, and what hurricane exposed folks call "hurricane food." What is hurricane food, you might ask? Nonperishable food items, such as canned meat, crackers, peanut butter and jelly, cookies, cereal bars, and chips...
I want you to know that days before the storm, people were packing up on food that I know they wouldn't normally take a second look at in the grocery store. I'm sure that the canned spam, sardine, tuna, and salmon industry are excited when a hurricane threatens the vulnerable coasts of America.
Perhaps when the folks in Houston were praying for the storm to hit another town, the canned meat industry was praying that the storm would hit Houston/Galveston. That’s the jackpot for the canned meat industry. Approximately six million people wanting to buy canned meat... I’m sure to the canned meat industry holds a pep rally, cheering and boosting the hurricane to hit in Houston/Galveston, rather than hitting some small towns that folks had never heard of before the approaching hurricane was threatening to terrorize their handful of citizens.
Well, let me tell you that I hate buying hurricane food items. Sometimes…Well, most of the times, it feels like a waste. The meteorologists start warning folks that the hurricane can hit a certain place, never having any really certainty on what the storm will do. So, people, like my mother, insist on not being unprepared for the pending arrival of a storm that can possibly come your way and punish the unprepared. So, folks go out and spend tons of money, purchasing items that seem to go to waste when the storm actually goes somewhere else.
So, as usual, I wasn’t too excited about going to the store. But my mother, being the sistah that she is, insisted upon it. And being the daughter that I am, I did what mama said to do. I grabbed my last few dollars, went to the store and bought all the canned meat, crackers, water, chips, and cookies that I could get my hands on. And when that storm looked like it was really going to come to H-town and spank us, I ran back to the store and bought candles, batteries, fruit, bread, and more ice and water. Hell, I was like Mama; I didn’t want to be unprepared either.
I made sure that I purchased enough food, water, ice, and other supplies to last us a couple of days, just in case the storm was bad as they were saying it was going to be. I figured that one of two things could possibly happen. A. That it would flood and the streets would be impassible. Or B. The lights would be out for a couple of days. So, I packed up the house with food that I figured that all of us, a family of eight, could eat, without being hungry and/or sick of.
Wasn’t I in for a rude awakening?
**To be continued...**
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