Hurricane Bonnie
No, not Tropical Storm Bonnie currently threatening the Florida Gulf Coast, but Hurricane Bonnie that hit northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia in August 1998.
I was living in Norfolk, VA then and was doing a paper route with my future ex husband. Because it was too dangerous to come to the distribution center, our batch of papers were delivered to us in the vestibule of our apartment building on Lucile Avenue. We lugged them upstairs as the hurricane raged outside all that night and put them together (putting them into plastic bags). We had been told that under no circumstances were we to go out to deliver them until the storm passed. That turned out to be about 9am the following morning. Our customers were surprised that we even delivered papers that day, with the streets being littered with debris and water and dead fish (we lived near the Lafayette River, and the force of the wind literally blew fish and rocks out of the water). It took four hours, but we got all 150+ papers to every house on our route. The paper rewarded us for going out after the storm by giving us a bit of extra money in our check and passes to the movies.
I remember looking out the window while the wind whipped around and blew the rocking chair we kept on the balcony out into the street (we found it the next morning in a million pieces...three streets over!). The electricity was out, the phones were out, and we were pretty much cut off from the rest of the world. We lived on the second floor of our building, and we contemplated going down into the basement. Since the basement flooded during a Nor'easter the year before, that wasn't a good idea in the long run. I found it ironinc that after living in Virginia for 10 years at that point, we hadn't gone thru a hurricane until Bonnie came along. We'd been hearing about Hurricane Gloria in 1985 for years, and Bonnie wasn't nearly as bad as Gloria had supposedly been.
For those of you who are now in the paths of both TS Bonnie and Hurricane Charley, stay safe. I know what you're going thru...
--MorelaterZ--
I was living in Norfolk, VA then and was doing a paper route with my future ex husband. Because it was too dangerous to come to the distribution center, our batch of papers were delivered to us in the vestibule of our apartment building on Lucile Avenue. We lugged them upstairs as the hurricane raged outside all that night and put them together (putting them into plastic bags). We had been told that under no circumstances were we to go out to deliver them until the storm passed. That turned out to be about 9am the following morning. Our customers were surprised that we even delivered papers that day, with the streets being littered with debris and water and dead fish (we lived near the Lafayette River, and the force of the wind literally blew fish and rocks out of the water). It took four hours, but we got all 150+ papers to every house on our route. The paper rewarded us for going out after the storm by giving us a bit of extra money in our check and passes to the movies.
I remember looking out the window while the wind whipped around and blew the rocking chair we kept on the balcony out into the street (we found it the next morning in a million pieces...three streets over!). The electricity was out, the phones were out, and we were pretty much cut off from the rest of the world. We lived on the second floor of our building, and we contemplated going down into the basement. Since the basement flooded during a Nor'easter the year before, that wasn't a good idea in the long run. I found it ironinc that after living in Virginia for 10 years at that point, we hadn't gone thru a hurricane until Bonnie came along. We'd been hearing about Hurricane Gloria in 1985 for years, and Bonnie wasn't nearly as bad as Gloria had supposedly been.
For those of you who are now in the paths of both TS Bonnie and Hurricane Charley, stay safe. I know what you're going thru...
--MorelaterZ--
My name is Stef, and I approve this post. Posted @ 10:10 PM
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