Editor’s Note: Marlow’s Coastal Empire is near the second landfall of Hurricane Ian, an impressive recent storm. We talked as it approached to ascertain safety issues and ensure best wishes for minor damage. Ian’s remnants are still pouring down from thick gray clouds at Refuge Farm, but no wind and no storm surge. They say the rain may stop tomorrow, so this will be a two-part episode into excitement as palpable as a storm surge.

You have probably heard the commentators attempting to insert “Climate Change” into each description of the storm to ensure we stay on message (that “narrative” thing about our worsening and undoubtedly ending world).

By contrast, just ten days ago we were celebrating the absence of any named storms this season, the first time in a quarter century. This morning, in fact, there was a celebration of doom predicated on advanced models loosely associated with observations due not later than 2050.

The modelers cherry-picked the start date for hurricanes to a year in which there was little activity. Marlow started his observations from under the storm with one of his Dad’s stories. This account is what it was like to weather storms in a boat not built to withstand them, which is the equivalent for living in a planet that occasionally experiences severe weather.

Oh, the 2050 thing? That is 28 years from now. I will be 99 that year, don’t know about you. As far as things getting worse, I will have lived twice as long as both my grandfathers. Never met them. Apparently things change. I think you and I will be dead, and everyone making the predictions will at least be retired. It is not as scary a prospect as the old ten-year doom cycles we Boomers have survived many times.

We have lived through the “It’s getting Colder!” “Wait, Warmer!” “Shoot, Changing!” mantras, but they apparently have realized ten years isn’t long enough or people to forget. They have stretched things out for the sake of whichever hysteria we are supposed to embrace. This morning, take a trip with Marlow’s Dad through a storm season in Florida. The one 68 years ago, and the people who were told to go out into it. And rescue folks.

– Vic

Author’s Note: As Hurricane Ian hurried off to its northerly graveyard, I started assembling the following thoughts as jigsaw puzzle pieces from various e-sharings with family and shipmate storm survivors and observers.

Their form flow arc is mostly in the chronological order I experienced them. Perhaps it’s likely there’s a better, more writerly, less snarky way of telling them. That’ll have to wait.

-Marlow

WW II USN crash boat up to hull speed

Undated photo of WW II US Navy crash boat and crew
(look at their worn shoes and calloused, grimy hands)

US Army Air Force crash boat litter. Crews would lower it into the
water to pick up the downed, often injured aircrew or their remains

As I sit here in a very comfortable Victorian era home high up on the Coastal Empire’s Savannah River bluff watching news from Hurricane Ian-devastated Fort Myers, I am overwhelmed. Not just by the destruction, but by memory shards arcing about higgly-piggly from my distant past. Yes, I am sickened by the damage to Sanibel Island which swaddled the retirement home of my deceased godparents, who were my late parents’ best friends, but I am also realizing that I’ve been losing certain tales that they reluctanly shared with us kids. Preserving our history is important. Hence, I am posting a few things I almost lost.

Sea storm wave action

This recent storm caused the Marlow clan siblings to share some of their stories –long before we were treated to the media’s ruin porn festival of photos and video of destruction back drops and tearful survivor interviews.

#1:

Kilo had this to say: My husband and I are both a bit shell shocked at the moment. It’s like the town we grew up is just suddenly gone, and in such a horrific way. When we went home for our brother’s funeral (Marlow comment: just too weeks earlier), we drove down the beach and went by all the houses he lived in growing up. He told me memories from each location. Then we went by the Beach Elementary where he went. His fourth-grade class had the honor of writing their names in the concrete at the entrance. We took multiple pictures of the sidewalk. I imagine that sidewalk is gone now (. . .) There is nothing but concrete structure shells left on Fort Myers Beach.

We also went by the shrimp docks and fish houses. (Marlow Comment: My BIL had docked his own shrimp boat there for years.) Early social media postings reveal the fleet is a complete loss, and it was largely uninsured. There are shrimp boats in parking lots and mobile home parks well inland today. The fish houses and docks are gone.

The devastation to Sanibel and Captiva is still unknown and I fear the islands will be unrecognizable. (Marlow Comment: they are in large part.)

We are fortunate that all of our friends and family are safe. Some don’t have homes or businesses to return to . . . but they are alive. For that, we are grateful.”

(We are grateful most of us got by safely. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who survived intact, and our prayers are for those who suffered in the storm’s fury. The family impact will continue tomorrow).

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