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Meanwhile, back at the ranch … Friday

Posted Friday, September 12, 2008

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8-year-old Travis Lovett enjoys the breakfast buffet at Home Town CafÈ Friday. Lovett and his family actually came to Angleton to stay with family friend Bunny Bailey for the duration of the hurricane—they live in Texas City, which is likely to be hit much harder than Angleton.

7 p.m. — We’re getting Big Wind in Angleton now. Not hurricane wind, but strong and sustained, from the north. Yards are littered with pieces of trees and bird nests, but nothing larger than an unsecured trashcan has blown by so far. Still no rain.
4 p.m. — I’ve been watching video from Surfside and Galveston on the Houston television stations, probably along with many of you.

It’s pretty grim. Storm surge has the mainland end of the Surfside Bridge under water that’s traveling up Highway 332 toward the levee. I know we’re all hoping the same thing.

The only other way off the island, Bluewater Highway, has been under water since this morning. Whoever’s left in Surfside, they’ll have to stay there now until the storm’s over.

Here in Angleton, it’s overcast and breezy. It sprinkled, briefly. It’s hard to believe we’re only a few miles from where the TV video is coming from.

We just got another recorded message from Mayor Patrick Henry over the emergency phoning system the city uses. The call was to remind us that there will be no city services at the height of the storm—no police, fire or ambulance—and asked again for everyone to evacuate. He said Angleton is forecast to have hurricane force winds by 10 p.m.

11 a.m. -- Judy Barnes called me last night. I’d been thinking about her, too. Not that much of a coincidence, really—we weathered Hurricane Alicia together in 1983, at Judy’s Angleton house, and Hurricane Ike has lots of people remembering Alicia.

Micheal worked during Alicia—he earned a rare citation from Associated Press for his work during the storm. I was all set to weather it in the house we rented, which is across the street from the one we now own, with our eldest, who was then 14 months old.

I was OK when the big trees in the back yard snapped like matchsticks, with cracks like bombs going off. I was OK when I couldn’t open the back door, and could see only the tops of our trees pressed against the windows on the south and east sides of the house. I was OK when the old casement-type windows all got suddenly sucked open. I was OK when the power went off, and when the phone stopped working.

Owner Jackie Graham, left, and Debbie Dunlap, who is usually the bartender, cook burgers Friday at The Icehouse on 288B.

I was OK until I walked outside at one point, and realized there wasn’t a single soul left on our street, or any of the streets around us. That’s when I packed up the baby and ran for Judy’s house.

Jim Short buys ice at the Chevron store on Highway 288B at Phillips Road Friday. “I’m probably going to stay home,” during the storm, Short said.

Judy and I worked together then, at The Angleton Times. Her house wasn’t a bit safer than ours, but it had people in it, and that made me feel safer. We remembered that storm Thursday night, and hoped Ike wouldn’t be much worse.

Friday dawned sunny and beautiful in Angleton, a little cooler than usual lately. Lovely.

About 9:30 a.m., I was near the County Courthouse when a thick blanket of gray cloud rolled over, and a strong gust of wind flapped my hair up on end. It was the first real weather-related sign we’ve had here that something’s coming.

Now, at 11 a.m., it is mostly gray and cloudy, but there are still brief periods of eye-wateringly bright sun, as Ike’s outer bands move over us.

The wind is also sporadic. The air goes still, then suddenly erupts in strong, sharp gusts that seem to come from many different directions at once. Lots of little dirt devils playing in the streets and parking lots.

This morning, there were still several gas stations open in the area. Business was good at all of them, but not panicky. All the groceries are closed today.

Business also was good for the Home Town Café’s breakfast buffet, which Micheal and I enjoyed along with a couple of dozen others. A few were on their way out of town, but most were here to ride out the storm. The Icehouse on 288B is open, and had a few customers.

Texas-New Mexico lineman Rodney Thomas works Friday morning near the intersection of Highway 35 and Chenango. Thomas was reducing the circuit loads at various locations around town, because of low usage after the evacuation.

Here and there around town are cars and pickups filled with kids who can’t be anything but surfers, and who were probably turned away from Surfside by law officers—a lot of Surfside is already flooded from storm surge, including sections of Bluewater Highway.

There are still some people loading stuff into their vehicles to leave, but this last-minute evacuation seems pretty leisurely. At every place we stopped, everyone was perfectly willing to stop whatever they were doing and talk a while—no hysteria, no panic, not even much of a hurry around town.

The county has parked a bunch of dump trucks and cherry-pickers over at the courthouse annex, ready to roll out in the wake of the storm and start cleaning up. There are quite a few TXDoT and Texas-New Mexico trucks in the area too, doing what they can to get ready, and waiting to go to work in the aftermath of the storm.

It’s a far cry from the panicky evacuation and the devastating traffic jam we faced during Rita.

After that evacuation, we were left here with a nearly empty city, and clear, beautiful skies, as the storm turned suddenly and viciously on the Beaumont-Port Arthur area.

The bands of cloud and bursts of wind this morning tell me we won’t be that lucky this time.

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