One friend is newly retired to the Sunshine State from New York and I called her both before and after the hurricane hit. Having gone through all sorts of weather disasters up in New Jersey, she simply put that mentality of grit and determination to work in her new surroundings. When I spoke to her after the power came back on, I noted that she seemed to profess this odd enjoyment of the whole event. It might have been different if her roof had blown off or her car had floated out to the Atlantic. But neither happened and she, in her own way, had been entertained by it all.
Now, when you live in New York, it is rare to get a hurricane that far up. Of course, the recent Sandy storm was horrific and lots of people are still dealing with that several years later. But, for the most part, you're safe from hurricanes in the Big Apple.
But I do remember two of them. One I think was named Donna and that one was noteworthy because it showed up on the very first day I ever went to school. Back in that day, you didn't have all that social media to drive up the angst several days before. Essentially, you heard a hurricane was coming and you dealt with it.
I had started kindergarten and, when we heard that Donna was almost there, school was dismissed. On this day, it was my grandfather who drove the five blocks to come and pick me up. I will never forget to this day how he stared out through the windshield and watched the first ravages of the wind.
"I guess we're really going to see a hurricane."
Our house on South Fifteenth Avenue in Mount Vernon would see it in a big way. Overnight, as the rain pellets on the window lulled us to sleep, there was suddenly a loud crash that woke everybody up. My father peeked out the upstairs window.
"Well, that big tree we wanted to remove in the yard is gone."
It had fallen over quite conveniently on a power line, which left us with no electricity. And, gasp for me...no cartoons.
Probably one of the first days in my life where I had to tough it ou.
The only other NY hurricane I remember might have been called Belle and it was predicted to hit landfall on Long Island around 10PM one night. This was years after my kindergarten premiere that was rained out. On the date of Belle, I was much older and had hot theater tickets with a slightly warmer date.
These days, Broadway is very sympathetic to weather and will cancel all performances due to extreme climate. Not so back then. It was strictly " no exchanges and no refunds."
All day long, I stayed close to the weather reports. Landfall would be happening just as the third act would be starting. Is this any way to take a date home from a Neil Simon comedy? I thought of her safety. More importantly, I thought of my own. And I thought about the 75 bucks I had shelled out for these hard-to-get ducats. (Yes, 75 dollars for two and that was a top price for a hot show).
I finally aired on the side of caution. Radio stations were telling everybody to stay home and definitely off the roads. Ah, that would be and should be me. Surely, the theater would revisit their policy on this the most disastrous of evenings.
I called the theater box office the next day to find out my next steps.
"No refunds. Our actors were here. Where were you?"
Home.
Safe.
And I hope everybody in Texas and Florida gets back to their normal lives really soon.
Dinner last night: Bacon cheeseburger at the Arclight.
No comments:
Post a Comment