An Encounter with Hermine

As its beginning to be light

The call came at 5:30 AM, an obnoxious buzzer from the 911 app on my phone.  Yesterday, the pager system went down, which is a bummer as the storm approaches.  I crawl out of bed, step into the bathroom and look at the phone.  I can’t read a thing, so I find my glasses.  It’s not a fire, but a public service call.  Someone has a tree on their roof.  I no longer rush, but dress listening to the rain and wind.  The storm isn’t supposed to be here until later this afternoon, but we’re definitely in a storm band from Hermine.  When the rain abates for a moment, I can hear distant thunder.  Grabbing some snacks as I don’t know how long I’ll be, I put on my raincoat and head out.  Without the pager, which allows you to hear radio traffic from the trucks, I’m unsure what I’m heading into. 

There are now two calls, one on Village Green Circle and another on Hunting Lane, both on the north end of the island.  I drive through the dark, down streets covered with Spanish moss, leaves and needles, but no real obstacles.  That all changes as I enter the Marshwood section of the island, that changes.  I dodge limbs and then pull to a stop behind the firetruck.  In front of us is a mass of trees in the middle of the road.  Ben and Shawn, who had stayed at the station overnight, brought out Engine 9 and are among the debris along with a couple of workers from the association.  Together, we worked to clear the road.  I haul limbs to the side and hold a flashlight for Ben who has the chainsaw.  It’s slow going.  After a bit of hard work, without making much headway, one of the workers for the association suggests that it would be a good idea to get out the backhoe.  We agree!  It would make things easier. 

On Hunting, as the sky lightens

We continue to cut and haul for the next fifteen or so minutes, but soon he’s back.  Instead of a digging arm, he’s put on claws that allows him to effortlessly grab logs and move them aside.  We walk along the backhoe so that we can cut logs that are too long for him to handle.  In ten or fifteen minutes, we have a path through the down trees and are able to make it to Hunting Lane.  We find a couple with two trees on their home.  “What took you so long, they ask?”  There isn’t really anything we can do and the trees look unstable.  Looking around, I see other trees that are broken.  One is a live oak about four feet in diameter with a crack at its base.  It’s leaning toward their neighbor’s house.  I go over and see a light on in the back (the entire island has underground utilities so electricity has stayed on despite an obvious tornado.  In his backyard, I realize he’s lost part of a porch.  I tell him about the other tree, but he doesn’t seem too worried and says he’ll stay in the far end of his house.  As we head back to the truck, I realize that it’s getting a little lighter.  Also, the rain has stopped.  We look around and can’t believe the devastation.  We head over to where a truck and crew from the station at the north end of the island are working.  Move devastation. This wasn’t supposed to be a bad storm.

The only home I saw that lost a roof

A natural area, notice the twisted pines

For the rest of the morning, we’re constantly being called out to help clear a fallen tree from a road or to help someone get their vehicle out of a garage that’s blocked.  One house has a gas lantern by the street, which has been knocked out by a fallen tree.  Gas is coming out and the woman of the house sacred her house might blow up.  I assure her she’s okay and eventually find the shut off valve for the lantern.  Other homes with major damage have no one at home and we cut the power and gas just in case.   Sadly, one of the homes destroyed was my secretary’s and her husband.  They told of how scary it was to have the skylights sucked out as the storm passed over. 

A stray tree on a house outside of tornado area

Our last storm related call is around 1 PM.  The eye has already passed us and the rain has abated.  At home, I check the gage and we’ve received 3.41 inches of rain in the past twenty-four hours.  Combined with yesterday’s 1.65 inches, we’ve received a little over five inches in two days.   After a dry summer, we can use the water.  Thankfully, there are only small branches, pine cones and leaves down at my house.  Labor Day will be a day of laboring for many of us on the island as we clean up from the storm. 

Driving through the tornado area after a fire call
This was later in the morning after the street had been cleared

A few days later, the National Weather Service published a bulletin on the storm.  It was an EF-1 tornado which developed over Romerly Marsha and moved westward for 1.3 miles, or about half way across the island.  The maximum winds were only 110 miles per hour, which while doing a number on trees didn’t flatten any houses.  The storm, at its largest, was 350 yards wide.  Although there were a number of trees down on the rest of the island, most of the major damage to homes were in the tornado’s path.  Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Riverview Hotel

Life continues at a frantic pace.  Labor Day is going to be just that, laboring as I have a messy yard after Tropical Storm Hermine came through here on Friday morning.  That turned out to be a busy day that started way too early as we (Volunteer Fire Department) were called out early.  A tornado struck the north end of our island and damaged a number of homes and blocked many roads with a tangled mess of live oaks.  More about that later.  Here is a post I started Thursday night.

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I’d scheduled a few days R&R after dropping my daughter off at college.  My plan was to spend a couple of nights on Cumberland Island, enjoying the beach (more about that in another post), but I needed a place to stay the night before heading over to the island.  As the Cumberland Island ferry leaves from St. Mary’s GA (a town just north of the Florida border), I checked for local establishments.  There are a lot of rooms in the St. Mary’s area, especially out near Interstate 95, but in the old town there were several B&Bs and an old hotel, The Riverview, that was celebrating 100 years of business (and 90 years in the same family).  Their lists of guests included Rockefellers, Carnegies (the family once owned most of Cumberland Island) and Willard Scott.  I knew that was the place.  I have a thing for old hotels.

Notice the cat

The cat was yawning, and isn't fierce at all!

The Riverview Hotel looks like an old hotel from out west, except that instead of using adobe, they used tabby construction.  Tabby is a cement made from oyster shells and sand.  The building has a veranda out front, from which one could look out on the harbor and the St. Mary’s River and look over to Amelia Island, Florida.  It was also a place where certain guests went to smoke, but more about that later.  The rooms are all upstairs, the first floor consist of the office in the middle and a saloon on the north end and a restaurant on the south side.  Inside, at the registration desk sitting on the sign-in booklet is a friendly black cat (I never did sign in).  When we arrived there were no one at the front gate and a note that said to see the bartender as they’d taken the dog for a walk.  The office area wasn’t air conditioned and was extremely hot at the end of a day that approached the century mark (100 degrees F) with extremely high humidity.  The bartender was friendly and got us our keys.  We were in the Willard Scott room.  We were told we’d want to turn on the air conditioner and cool the room (no kidding!).  We went up and dropped our bags, turned on the AC, then went down to the dining room where we stood waiting for a table.  There was only one server and she was engaged in a deep conversation with the only table with patrons.  We waited and waited and decided we didn’t need to give our business to someone who didn’t even acknowledge us.  We headed to the saloon.  We learned they shared menus and the place was lively.  The bartender was over immediately to get us drinks and give us a menu.  I had a wonderful blacken grouper sandwich.

Upstairs  hallway (beautiful but hot)

We sat at the bar and talked to other patrons (a couple from Beaufort, South Carolina who regularly visits) and a couple of locals.  The beer was cold and the prices reasonable.  An hour or so later, we were back to the room.  The room was just beginning to cool off.  We watched a little of the closing of the Olympics, but went to bed early.  I’d been a long day and we needed to be up early in the morning to catch the ferry to Cumberland Island.  The ferry terminal was across the street.

The next morning, I went out and wrote in my journal on the veranda.  Even though the sun was just coming up, it was hot and sticky.  Another guy came out on the veranda and spent the time talking on the phone and smoking a cigarette.  I realized then why the room which was non-smoking smelled like smoke.  He stood right in front of our air conditioner unit and it was sucking in his exhaust.   The hotel had a light breakfast (cereal, fruit, pastries and coffee), which fueled us for our trip to Cumberland Island. 

The ferry to Cumberland Island

 I wouldn’t recommend this hotel for everyone, but if you like old places, you might like it.  I’d take it any day over the cookie cutter hotels along the interstate.  The room was clean.  I wish they could have cooled the room a bit before we arrived.  Also, the air conditioner unit was loud.  I would stay again, but probably not in the summer.  Also, I wouldn’t pay the extra fifteen dollars for the veranda room as it doesn’t really matter.  The room didn’t have a door onto the veranda and all patrons have access to it (though a sitting room).  Furthermore, not being on the veranda would mean that you wouldn’t have to deal with cigarette smoke being drawn into the room.  I’d enjoy spending time exploring St. Mary’s as well as returning to Cumberland Island, so maybe one day I’ll return.  

The Chickenbone Special

Dwayne E. Walls, The Chickenbone Special (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 233 pages.

A disabled father loses a son the day after the son graduates from high school.  His son, Donnie, accepts a cash graduation gift from a sister already in New York City and buys a ticket on the afternoon train up north. His old man wonders who’ll be left to shave him.  A church is sadden by the loss of one of its promising young women when she decides to seek her fortune in Baltimore.  Yet, in gratitude for her faithfulness, they pay her what she's owed and give her a bonus to help with the transition.  Another family, with the promise of a good job and a good house in Washington DC, drives north.  Four young African-American men, having graduated from high school, take the bus to Rochester, New York.  The stories of these men and women are echoed thousands of times over again in the 20th Century as part of the great migration from the rural to the city.  In The Chickenbone Special, Walls captures the story of a few of those who made journey in the late 1960s.

There were so many young African-American youth leaving following graduation that the railroad would put on extra cars to handle all the traffic.  Most left by train (especially those going to Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York).   Those boarding had with them a ticket, a few dollars, a bag of food, and a suitcase containing their belongings.  The lines running along the East Coast, from Florida to New York, were nicknamed "Chickenbone Specials" as many of the passengers didn't have the funds to eat in the dining cars.  A favorite in their bag of vittles was a piece fried chicken, from which the train derived its nickname.

Wall captures the turmoil of the small communities losing their most promising young adults, who were lured north.  For some, the North became the Promised Land as they found jobs and decent housing and were able to provide for themselves and their families.  For others, it ended in tragedy.  Problems like unplanned pregnancies resulted in shipping back children to be cared for by grandparents.  Violent deaths resulted in bodies being shipped back.  The ghettos provided new challenges for those used to living in the country.  Some who left decided life wasn't so bad in the South and migrated back, while some of the men joined or were drafted into the military. 

Walls' story is told against the backdrop of change in agriculture.  Wall's research was conducted in two areas (Kingstree SC and Warren County NC), where tobacco and cotton were the chief products.  With new machinery, it was taking fewer hands to harvest the crops.  Small farms with a minuscule tobacco allotment struggled to survive.  However, for those without the resources to buy the ticket as soon as school let out, they could stick around for the summer and pick up enough work in tobacco fields to earn their fare north after the harvest.

Wall also captures a glimpse into the networks that supported those migrating.  In the South, the church and the family provided stability for the community.  Often, those heading north had a relative who had paved the way beforehand.  These relatives would meet the new resident at the train or bus station and give them shelter while they looked for a job.   He told the story of how the African-American community grew in the Rochester area, starting with a clergy grower who early in the 20^th Century recruited migrant workers from Florida to work in his fields in the north.  Overtime, many of the migrants stayed and the community grew to be quite sizable. 

I recommend this book for anyone interested in African-American migration and the rural to urban flight.  However, it is not a sociological study.  Walls is a journalist and has collected stories which help the reader get a sense for the time.  For those of us who are not African-American, this book along with Melton McLaurin’s Separate Paths: Growing Up White in the Segregated South provide insight into rural South of the mid-20^th Century.  Another recommendation, which focused on the rural poor white of the time, (which included many white families) at the time tenant farming was waning is Linda Flowers, Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina.

Dwayne Walls was a reporter for the Charlotte Observer.  I learned of this book (which is long out-of-print and I picked up a used former library copy) from Phil Morgan.  Phil was a photographer at the Observer, who worked with Walls on this story.  One of Phil’s photographs (of an African-American family waiting on the train) is on the dust cover of the book.  

Happy birthday NPS!

Today, our National Parks Service turns 100 years old.  We had national parks years before the “Service” began in 1916.  Today they manage the 58 National Parks along with a host of other sites.  I’ve been to 23 of the National Parks.  Sixteen of these, I have camped in and twelve I’ve backpacked or overnight canoed in.  These are the parks I’ve visited:  Arches, Badlands, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Death Valley, Everglades, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Great Basin, Great Smoky Mountains, Isle Royale, Kings Canyon, Lassen Volcanic, Mesa Verde, Petrified Forest, Redwood, Rocky Mountains, Sequoia, Shenandoah, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion.

The Park Service does more than administer National Parks.  There are many wonderful National Monuments (I used to live just down from Cedar Breaks and Devils Tower is down right spooky).  There are also National Seashores, such as Cumberland Island which was where I spent the fist half of this week.  There are many other wonderful seashores and lake shores they operate which I have enjoyed (Point Reyes, California; Cape Hatteras and Lookout in North Carolina; Picture Rocks and Sleep Bear Sand Dunes in Michigan).  They also maintain historical battlefields, presidential museums, and a host of other sites. 

Happy birthday, NPS!  

Parting Shot: Sunset at Cumberland National Seashore

Heat, Volunteer Firefighting, and a moonlight paddle

It has been a hot summer.  July was the second hottest since they started keeping records in Savannah and the average temperature of the month was 86.1 F.  We have had nearly 60 straight days of 90 degrees or above.  It has also been humid, often at 90%, yet the humidity hasn’t resulted in much rain.  We’ve only had a little over an inch in all of July and about the same in August.  Everything is dry.  Those south of Jacksonville or just to the north or a bit inland have been getting rain.  But the warm landmass have created strong sea breezes that keeps the moisture from reaching us along the coast.

Photo by another volunteer

On top of the heat, life this summer has been a bit chaotic as a volunteer fireman.  We have had numerous calls into homes where the air conditioning air handler motors have burned up and filled the home with smoke.  Thankfully, no one has been hurt (although without air conditioning in this climate, they run the risk of burning up with a fire).  But last Wednesday, we had a call that I didn’t want to hear.  My pager went off at 4:25 AM.  The dispatcher announced that a neighbor had called in that his house was fully engulfed.   Although the fire was on the island I live, it was a good six miles from my house.  I arrived after the first trucks, but the house was already gone with the roof caving in.  We were there for seven hours.  At first, it was putting out grass fires that threatened neighbors, while trying to keep the fire cooled as it burned.  Once the fire was contained, we were able to put it down, but only with a lot of water. 

Photo by another volunteer,
shooting water over the creek 

The past week, we’ve had many calls for smoke and a fire.  A hammock (a high sandy place in the middle of a marsh where there are trees (pines, live oaks, myrtles, palmettos, etc) has been burning and every wind shift we get a call.  The hammock is about a 100 yards from a Continuing Care development and on Monday night, when it was burning on the side of the development and spreading sparks, someone through we should try to do something.  We set a line out into the marsh on the edge of a deep creek separates the hammock from the mainland.  We poured water through a blitz nozzle that could shoot several hundred feet.   We had two trucks and I manned the hydrant, filling one truck while the other was employed in pumping water.  We cooled the fire a bit, but we were unable to put it out.  That’ll have to wait for rain.  We poured water for about an hour and when I got home, my T-shirt was soaked with sweet.  The fire continues to burn, but not as hot as much of the undergrowth is already consumed. 

Preparing to head out

On Tuesday evening, another volunteer and I decided we’d check it out while enjoying a moonlight paddle.  At the last minute, the other guy wasn’t able to make it, so I went by myself.   I put in at Butterbean Beach at sunset and paddled up the Intracoastal Waterway.   The moon, as it was a few days before full, was above the horizon and rising.  Bottlenose dolphins greeted me as I paddled out through the bridge and toward the creek running up toward the hammock.  As the light faded, you could see a bit of smoke from the hammock.  The moon’s rays shimmered as I paddled up into the creek.  The fire was laying down.  The night before the flames were jumping up five or ten feet.  This evening, there were only a few small visible flames that looked like campfires.  What was neat was seeing the vortexes of dead pines, which were burning from cavities inside the trees and spewing out sparks.  After paddling around the hammock, I returned back to the waterway.  Stars were beginning to come out, although dimly with the bright moon.

Approaching the smoking hammock

I could faintly make out the Big Dipper, the North Star, and Cassiopeia to the north.  When I turned around, and headed back south, I could see all of Scorpius including his tail above the southern horizon.   To the east was Sagittarius, the archer, his bow drawn as he chases the scorpion from the sky.  Fish jumped around my boat.  I paddle down to Pigeon Island, then turn around and head back toward my car.   It’s been a nice evening and as long as I’m on the water, there are no worries…

Today, I washed my bunker gear and tomorrow, I leave to help move my daughter into her college dorm.  :(