Tampa, Florida					Monday, September 06, 2010

A Storm Story—A Good Storm Story
Sunday, August 15, 2004
TAMPA—Wife Linda, 11-year-old grandson, Tommy, and I returned to our bayside home on Davis Islands in Downtown Tampa Saturday just before noon and were in attendance at the first possible Sacred Heart Church service possible at 5:30 PM to give thanks. That our home, whose back room and porch is only 20 feet from the water and is 50 feet wide, the glass-enclosed porch is behind an old, old, concrete, but protective seawall, was safe, unharmed, as we were, was more than good enough reason for church. Many in this grand but sometimes weather turbulent near-island state and their property were not so fortunate. Some would call it luck, good fortune, the breaks, or God’s Will. We preferred the last and most powerful, but can give no reason why we and those thousands of others who were and those who were not in God’s Will this time was on our side. None. Will attempt none. Will not speculate, but that cancer of weather maladies did not inflict its terror on us, or ours, this time. But we were and we gave the thanks the only way we knew for being spared from Harm’s Way that was Hurricane Charley. Charley didn’t get us. It got thousands of others. Not us. We made all, all of the right decisions in this fateful time involving an enemy we well respect and in an area we also know well and have lived, the West Coast (Gulf Coast) and Central Florida, the Valley of the old, usually properly named Peace River. That river begins in the swamps of Bartow and empties into Charlotte Harbor at Punta Gorda, after winding through Fort Meade, Bowling Green, my old home of Wauchula, Arcadia, Nocatee and Punta Gorda. And we have lived and worked (sports editor, travel agency) in Tampa for 40 years. Let me set the scene. First, we know hurricanes. My daddy took me as an under 10 age to see how a hurricane in the Thirties had emptied much of Lake Okeechobee on Moore Haven and prompted the great dikes around that great fresh water lake. I have been in the eye of three others, including the angry Donna, who charted this same course as Charley also took, up Florida’s gut. And, Linda and I have, in the 35 years of marriage, lived in this wonderful waterside home, evacuated once, and weathered three other biggies. So, here came something different, but horrible. Two hurricanes, one trailing another, Bonnie, then Charley. Well, Bonnie got out of here but the tracks had Charley coming right at us in heavily populated Tampa Bay. We had never in our times been head on. But, we were about to have it happen, this last Saturday afternoon around 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., all said. The charts had Charley cold-cocking us in the nose. It was coming and we were going. All advice said go east on I-4 or 60 Orlando or Lakeland-ward, 30-60 miles away and hide out. We were going. We got friends, led by Darryl (Cuda) Patterson, former basketball star, to help us sandbag our backside, while taking all off our back porches. Our porch, again, then our 50-foot long party room full of African art, was cleared out. We expected water in our house. We had elevated our seawall with train ties and sandbags and planted seagrapes, but a direct hit would get us anyway. We knew that. We declined invitations to stay with close friends at higher places in and around Tampa. I called my cousin, Barbara Carlton, to see if we could go to west on 60 to 64, then south to one of their ranches a few miles west of Wauchula. We knew it well. I then called Carol Barnett and husband Barney (Publix bosses) to make reservations in Lakeland at the Terrace Hotel. This as Thursday before the Charley was to arrive Saturday. It was full. Carol Barnett invited Linda, Tommy and me to stay with them at their estate in Lakeland. We would leave Saturday morning for either Wauchula, 60 miles southeast, or Lakeland, 40 miles east, for the night, or, well, the emergency. We decided to accept the Barnett’s marvelous, generous offer, told them so, and arrived noonish Saturday, with all reports and the TV reporting Charley still headed for our gut in Tampa. It was a good decision—for the moment. Our secret desire was that the hurricane turn inland south of us, south of Tampa. We know so well you need to be on the leftside of a hurricane looking to the east. The sea surge, the water, the winds hit those on the southside	of the invader. If Charley went into Tampa Bay, we in our Davis Islands home would get the sweeping water surge as the hurricane went north—the surges going to 14 feet. We were in trouble. We were going to get clobbered—our home was. Interstate I-4 was full of refugees. We had been ordered to leave. The officials were going to cut off water and electricity to our island and others. Tampa and St. Petersburg and the beaches, had emptied, the migration moving east towards Orlando. Tampa Bay was a ghost place. Then, it happened. While we are transfixed to the TV reports, one, then, two, then the official hurricane people in Miami said Charley had wobbled. It had moved slightly landward. Yipes! Charley was changing direction. And it was confirmed. The hurricane was going to hit land at the mouth of the Peace River at Charlotte Harbor. It was going to crash into a heavily populated area the Mackle Family began years ago, now packed with people, so many, too many, in mobile homes, no match for Charley. And, now the hurricane—Charley—had moved and was still coming at us. It was going up the Peace River to Punta Gorda, Arcadia, Wauchula, Bartow, Fort Meade, Lake Wales, Haines City, Winter Haven, even Orlando. And it would. While trying to flee its path, now the hurricane changed, too. It was coming at us, at Wauchula, then at Lakeland. And, it did. The eye did not come over us, but it went over the Barbara Carlton ranch, one of three, at Oak Grove on Troublesome Creek, west of Wauchula, and beautiful. The Carlton home, the guest homes, were spectacular, surrounded by big magnolias, the oaks, and parts of the Carlton Groves of oranges. Charley then moved up the river, tearing up Wauchula, after tearing up Charlotte Harbor, Captiva, Sanibel, Useppa, Boca Grande, and those barrier beauties of fishing and swimming and boating, surfing and sunning, then moving on Arcadia and Wauchula, Bartow and Lake Wales. Winds were 115 when Charley landed at Punta Gorda, then stuck at 80-100 as the winds blustered and beat up on the people and their properties. “It is awful,’’ said Pat Carlton, son of Barbara. He and wife Windy had actually gone to Wauchula Saturday morning to meet us, then went back home to Sarasota when the hurricane changed tract. It was supposed to slam into their Sarasota home as it was supposed to get us. Then, when the course changed, it chased the Pat Carltons back to their unharmed home, too. “But,’’ said Pat, Sunday, “I went down Saturday morning. It was bad. All the trees in the yard were down, or bent. One oak got the corner of mom’s home. When I drove through the orange groves and ran over the green oranges blown from the trees, it was as if I were running over pop corn. I will say we have lost 30 percent of our crop,’’ not usually ready for picking until the late fall. “It was bad. The cattle? No, they don‘t care. And the wildlife, the game, loved it. The storm turned over the ground so the turkeys had their fill of worms. The deer and other game were happy. They had water and food and a new landscape. But, the people, well, that was different. It was bad. I will go to our ranch in Arcadia, the Rusty Pot, I know it will be bad there, too. I have told mom. We will get by this.’’ In Lakeland, at the Barnett Estate, there were high winds and some tree damage. I called my neighbor, Dr. Phil Stromquist and he said, “no, no damage. I moved my boat to a safe haven. You have no damage. Come on home.’’ We did. Meanwhile, Charley moved on north to the big places in the east, socked those people and places, too, but while Charley had chased us, about Florida, we got away, in such a large part due to the Barnett Family. We went home Saturday morning, less than 24 hours after evacuation. We took backroads known to us. So, we had no traffic problems that plagued those on I-4 and a washed out Highway 60, beyond Lakeland, where we hid out. We went home. No, no damage at all, but, had it hit us as Charley first had in mind, we’d have been wiped out—I mean, wiped out. Nothing. So, we went home and went to church. We also knew it was also God’s Will that we do that, too. ##
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