THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, August 22, 1995               TAG: 9508220381
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Column 
SOURCE: Guy Friddell 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   60 lines

FELIX GOT US ALL STIRRED UP AS IT STALKED AND STALLED

When Hampton Roads residents recount past hurricanes, Felix, a big blowhard who never got here, will be remembered with the worst.

Felix put on a show without ever coming ashore. It was the only storm to send me on a shopping spree in case we were marooned.

The haul included a baked Virginia long-cure ham. It retains its rich, salty essence to the last shred. Sliced nearly paper thin, as it should be, a long-cure Virginia ham can go darn near as far as the loaves and the fishes.

Backing it up were a dozen Harper hybrid cantaloupes, two gallons of Bergey's ice cream with 14 percent butterfat, a peck of peaches, a gallon of milk.

As well as a bushel of vegetables for soup, five dozen discus-sized biscuits from Circle Seafood, two packs of stone ground meal for corn pone.

Also a sack of dog chow and three dozen tins of cat food.

There'd have been 19 orphans of the storm from Willoughby Spit and the Hague - six human kind, seven cats and six dogs spread among five bedrooms, a play room, sun room, living room in a house that has had three stages of growth, the first 75 years ago.

It would have been interesting.

But Felix didn't make landfall.

Some hold that televangelist Pat Robertson had advised his followers to pray: Rain, rain, go away.

You might be skeptical of that theory, but various presidential candidates would testify to the potency of the Christian Coalition.

My feeling is that Felix was frightened off by the graphic accounts of its Boswell, Steve Stone, who churned out front page weather stories that had the storm heading dead for downtown Norfolk's Granby Street with wings extending 150 miles on either side.

Stone becomes the storm. As he charts its course, you gather he is thinking like a storm. The storm, meanwhile, through some electromagnetic atmosphere, maintains contact with Stone.

A contest ensues, Stone and Storm, in which each tries to outwit the other. They parry. Stone predicts that the storm will reach us by nightfall, whereupon it rests and camps on our doorstep.

Each reflected the other's movements. When Stone was on the run, you knew the storm was on the move. When he sat and ruminated, you felt the storm was brooding.

It prowled offshore five days and then went out to sea again and dissipated in the mid-Atlantic.

That storm reminded me of Albert, an alligator in Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo. An expansive, flamboyant fellow who had a cigar in his mouth.

When anybody seeing Albert called, ``ALLIGATOR! There's an alligator!'' Albert panicked, lost his cigar and shouted, ``Where? Where's the Alligator?''and ran for his life.

Which is what Felix did, finally.

KEYWORDS: HURRICANE FELIX by CNB