Weather

There are some people who will begin to talk about the weather whenever there is a gap in the conversation. Sometimes I have been foolish enough to fall for that and additionally comment on the weather, even though I have a massive tolerance for whatever weather comes along. This tolerance began, I believe, while walking to school. It did not matter what the circumstances were, we always went to school. At that time the post office motto was our own, neither rain, snow, sleet, or whatever, the mail went through; and we did too. It was routine for the Beauregard children to get certificates for "Perfect Attendance" and we all amassed many. I can remember feeling embarrassed being called in front of the room to receive the certificate. It was taken home, given to my Mother, and it was never seen again. She probably grew bored getting them for all her children. Rita may have been an exception, I vaguely remember her being weak and sick a few times. The tropical storm (hurricane?,) "Fay" has recently come into the Jacksonville area. The TV and Radio stations were our guardians, they were not going to let us be hurt. Early warnings came with instructions for food, water, shelter, personal safety, driving, boarding up a home, home compressors, etc. All stations, all the time. As the storm got closer the media became more frantic and reiterated over and over that they should be listened to, if not it was perilous. (As you may know, the movement of the storm slowed giving more time for the messages.) For those like myself, we watched the wind velocity of the storm and increasingly felt assured that this was not going to affect us greatly. Not so the media, they had a job to do and by God they were going to do it. They were calling for the schools to be shut down, and they were. They called for people to stay off the roads, and they did. On Wednesday, the 20th, schools were closed and the winds were 23 mph. There was a lot of rain, heck, we had been getting a lot of rain for a month. Of course, some roads flooded over and had to be driven in carefully. Thursday was another day of school closure. Friday was another day of school closure. The winds may have been gusting at 30 mph at the most for all these days. Rains were intermittent and there was a lot of it. On Friday it was obvious to the media that the storm was a complete bust. They turned their attention to Tornadoes which could come at any time, all conditions were ripe for tornadoes. Radio stations were preempted for more than six hours to give non-stop news about tornadoes. By God they were going to do their job. I am only aware of one water spout being spotted off the coast. I am aware of only a few trees falling over. (Had the winds been higher more trees would have fallen because all the ground hereabouts was saturated with water.) This has been stated in order to throw some light on how the media have been infiltrated by "chicken Little's." A rational person knows that winds of 50mph is easily withstood by the citizens. But it is tempting to go into full attack mode when an opportunity presents itself. Oh yes, the shelters were opened up for people at the urging of the media. We were informed that only two families did actually show up at one of them. This whole city lost three days, what a waste.