THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 17, 1995 TAG: 9508160193
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: John Pruitt
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Hazel.
The very name churns recollections - not of the beloved maid who for so many years provided innocent entertainment on the television show bearing her name; not exclusively of Hazel Crockett, who always bought one item each trip to the grocery store, the front door of which aligned perfectly with hers; but Hazel the hurricane.
Hazel Crockett was big, though, so we children made much to do of all the damage done by the hurricane bearing her name. That irritated her, something she should never have displayed, for it only perpetuated our teasing.
At times like this week, when the talk is about high tides, wind and waves, one word screams from my memory: Hazel!
At the very highest point of land on Tangier Island - the five-square-mile-or-so dot of land on which I grew up, smack dab in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay - we could strike water faster than we ever wanted. You can imagine, then, how disconcerting it was for adults to hear weather forecasters telling of high water and strong winds simultaneously.
And, as foolhardy as it sounds now, perhaps you can understand the sense of adventure it awakened in a child's mind. In most of the storms of my childhood, we just got the day off from school - ostensibly because the principal didn't want us having to wade to school, which is something I've never understood because we spent the day wading in the tide anyway - unless the water was unbearably cold.
But much wiser old-timers talked much the way forecasters talk today: There might be a bunch of little storms to make us think old Mother Nature was becoming kinder. But take their word: There'd be more big storms.
Why, they said, in 1933, sailing schooners navigated right over the main street without so much as a drag against the bottom. And, they said, houses got washed out into the Bay. And those that weren't got put on scows and brought to higher land. That's what happened to Upwards - They said Uppards - and The Point - They said the pint - people soon enough learned that they were no place to be when a big storm came.
Yes, indeed, they said, and it could happen again.
And I remember when it did happen, when Hazel came with a fury I'd not seen in my 9 years. I remember the tallest tree on the island lying across the main street, its limbs crashing Miss Monnie's porch. I remember the rooftop antennae, snapped in half as neatly as a match; the countless roofs missing chimneys and shingles; the chest-high water into which I stepped when my mother declared it time for us to seek higher ground and a house standing lower than our 2 1/2-story house, which rocked with each gust.
I remember the tales:
When an island crabber went into a mainland restaurant just as the storm started, the owner asked: ``Can't you pray?'' He could, the man said, ``but wasn't there plenty of time for that before the storm started?''
By the way, he and several other crabbers nearly drowned on the way home. I bet he prayed then!
I remember the sights:
Boats in places that now had returned to being high land, men lifting refrigerators from cinderblocks that had kept them out of the tide, more power lines down than up, practically everyone on the island outside to survey the damage, old-timers with that what-did-I-tell-you look.
And I see my mother - still living on the island, increasingly reluctant to leave for anything, including a Hazel-type storm.
An inner part of me wants to be with her when she brings out the kerosene lamps, fills containers with fresh water and brings in everything that might float away or get blown away. Even if I know the old-timers and the forecasters are right. by CNB