My phone is managing Text & Talk, transferring photos not so much. Hopefully, a local hurricane pic or two by next week.
On the lighter side, posted to Facebook before the storm . . .
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HURRICANES I HAVE KNOWN
As I was mentally running through the list of hurricanes I've endured, I realized the post might be WAY too long, so I'll attempt to confine myself to the two most memorable storms while I lived in New England.
The only date I remember is my first hurricane, as it was my father's birthday: September 21, 1938. From our home in Mansfield, MA, we drove 25 miles to Providence, RI, planning to spend the morning shopping, taking in a movie in the afternoon. As we wandered around downtown, my father, a Nebraska farmboy, kept sniffing the air, frowning, finally saying, "If we were in Nebraska, I'd call this 'tornado weather'." Shortly after lunch, he declared we were going home. I remember crying because I had been promised a movie. By the time we got our car and started to drive out of town, green balls of fire were leaping out of transformers and even at age five I knew Daddy was right. This was BAD. I was ordered to lie flat on the floor in the rear seat and I did, surfacing only when I heard my parents exclaiming about half-way home. I will never forget the sight of a portly policeman standing with his hand against a giant tree, motioning all cars to move to the far side of the road as they drove by.
We made it home safely but later discovered that 20 minutes after we left, the tidal wave (now called storm surge) came in, putting 15' of water in the lot where we had parked our car. And a man in our town was one of the 700 casualties when, all unsuspecting—nobody knew anything about hurricanes at that time—he went out to check on his business during the eye of the storm, and the eyewall came back with such force he was thrown through the store's plate glass window. Why 700 casualties? Because absolutely NO ONE knew that storm was out there. So everyone was caught by surprise, as most of the Rhode Island shoreline was washed away, as well as portions of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Allegedly, wind gauges broke at 200 mph.
Many years later, my parents and I would stay in the home of friends on the RI shore. The original house on that property had been swept a mile inland and deposited upright and in one piece on a vacant property. The house owners rebuilt on the original location. And, oh yes, the story is, the old house must have been swept OVER the power lines, as they did not break!
After that, hurricanes seemed to have found the track to New England, and thankfully, weather-forecasting improved. I experienced a number of storms over the years, though nothing to compare with '38, thank God. And then when I was married, with young children, and living on waterfront property in Branford, CT, another memorable storm came my way. We weren't too worried as our house was an 1830 Federal, set about 100 feet back from the beach, and had obviously survived many a storm in its time. Also, we were protected by the jetty of the nearby yacht club and hulking bulk of Long Island eighteen miles across the sound.
BUT we were wakened early in the morning by a roaring noise, which turned out to be a mini-tornado, which crashed one of our three huge oak trees on top of our porch roof. It came so close to our bedroom that one tiny branch poked a hole through the screen. The porch, added sometime around the turn of the 20th c., was solid as rock, no repair needed.
The wind roared and screamed for most of the day, but no more damage that we could see. Until we finally dared poke our noses out and discovered the electric cable to the house was down across the garage door. Not severed but just lying there. The rose hedge to the right of our lawn was lying flat in multiple directions, confirming they were laid low by a tornado, not the hurricane. My huge front garden, near the beach (maybe 5' by 50') was pretty much flattened. Not a disaster, except a week later we were scheduled to host the wedding of our neighbors' daughter on our lawn. (I ended up staking nearly every flower in the garden.)
As for the electrical cable, my husband drove nails into the top of two 2x4s (likely left over from the playhouse my husband built for our three kids) and he and my sons—while I watched, cringing—managed to maneuver the downed electrical cable into the spaces between the nails and raise the cable above the garage door so we could get the cars in and out.
Three days without power. Fortunately, sunny days. Twins in the neighborhood, classmates of my older son, power-sawed our poor tree into maneuverable pieces. But we had just had $700 worth of food delivered to our basement freezer, and we lost it all. On the third day my neighbor went out on his back porch and howled out over the salt marsh to the east of us—a long, loud wail from a staid Yale professor that spoke for all of us. Then, finally, light. Except our electrical cable was still riding on 2x4s and it finally occurred to us that maybe the power company didn't know about our problem. (They were, in fact, quite surprised to see our home-grown remedy.)
As for the wedding . . . I even managed to get some of the rose hedge back in place before the big event. The weather was sunny; all went without a hitch. But that hurricane, like the infamous '38, was one I've never forgotten.
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Featured book: my first Romantic Suspense, originally written for an early ebook publisher. The setting: the central Gulf Coast town that was my home for 25 years before my move to the Orlando area to be near the grandgirls. (The Venice area was hit hard by Milton this week, including houses inundated with sand!)
Back to Shadowed Paradise: In addition to using real settings, I incorporated the personal cultural shock I encountered after moving from New Haven's Yale community to a mix of genuine Florida rednecks, mid-Western retirees, and a plethora of "snowbirds" (winter residents only).
When Claire Langdon's affluent, near-fairytale life in New York is shattered by scandal, she and her eight-year-old son Jamie take refuge with her grandmother in Florida. Once a bright, confident young woman, Claire has been so badly hurt that when she stumbles onto a genuine downhome hero, learning to trust, to love again, seem beyond her reach. She is also forced to deal with the discovery that there are more serious dangers in Florida than alligators, snakes, spiders, and macho males. Like a serial killer, with her name on his list.
Reviews:
"Marvelously versatile, wondrously creative, intelligently written and sensuously inventive, Bancroft's Shadowed Paradise adds new meaning to the therm 'romantic suspense.' . . . as fresh as tomorrow and seriously scary. I loved it."
Celia Merenyi, A Romance Review
"Shadowed Paradise contains all the elements I so enjoy in a book, excellent dialogue, great character development and fine descriptive scenes. The romance is steamy, the suspense is taut and exciting, and the result is a supremely satisfying, well-developed read, guaranteed to keep you glued throughout."
Astrid Kinn, Romance Reviews Today
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Thanks for stopping by,
Grace (Blair Bancroft)
