hurricanes when i was growing up

He decided how hard the winds should blow and how much rain should fall. (Job 28:25)

I grew up in south Texas on the coast. We lived in a town called Freeport for much of the first years of my life. Freeport was well below Houston and right on the Gulf Coast.

Because of the proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, we had a lot of hurricanes. They would blow in and we would hunker down in the house to wait them out. My father worked for Houston Lighting and Power so he had to go out into the storms to repair electrical lines as they broke.

This was a bruising job in that he climbed 100 foot poles in hurricane force winds. I was told that the poles would sway quite a bit and occasionally someone would fall off.

But people want their electricity so out they would go and work sometimes for days before coming back home.

And when they came back home, sometimes they came back to homes that had been destroyed by the storms.

We only ran one time. That was Hurricane Carla in 1961. We went inland about fifty miles and stayed in a garage apartment during the storm. Carla was a particularly bad storm, a Category Five hurricane so a lot of damage was done.

In a storm like this, the power of raw nature is so apparent. Whole houses were gone, whole subdivisions wiped out, many families left homeless having lost all their possessions.

We never did. There were a couple of times we had mildew from the water lapping against the bottoms of the floors or meat ruined when the electricity went out and the freezer was off too long in the South Texas heat, but in general, we were blessed.

But it was funny. We never ran except from the Category Five Hurricane Carla. That was a bad one and it was good we did. Freeport was hurt badly in the storm. In general, we rode them out.

We would sit and do something, reading, or playing games. My mother would try her best to keep us from worrying while she herself was consumed with worry about my father working in the storm. When the lights went off, as they always did, we would light candles.

I really do not remember what all we did in the storms, while the hurricane raged outside our home, but I do remember the strength of my mother, keeping her family from harm. And I remember that I was never afraid.

When I hear people today gibbering in fear from the small storms that hit, I remember her and her strength. And I remember us sitting in the dark with candles lit, doing whatever it was we did, waiting.