Today I’m glad to be alive! Monday night as the wind surges tossed tree tops about and boughs began to hit the roof, then a tree fell on the roof over the bedroom, I thought of other storms in life. This time I wasn’t sure the house would stand and we went to the lowest and hopefully safest spots to hunker down. It was frightening to hear the surging winds sound like huge lungs breathing in and out! Several trees are down now but we are safe!
I sweated it out last night and recalled other storms in life. As a boy growing up in Germany Valley of Rabun County, Georgia, I was born after the hurricane of March 17, 1932, that destroyed or damaged many homes and barns, plus miles of split rail fences, in our valley and all across the county. After that storm, Neal Justus, my father, kept a storm shelter to which we often ran when a storm broke over the Blue Ridge Mountains. In later years, he built a dugout lined with cement blocks in which he stored canned food for home consumption and often took naps in it while a thunderstorm passed over.
On a troop ship bound for Korea, west of Hawaii, a hurricane pounded the ship for two days and nights. Our sleeping bay was at the very stern of the ship and as each wave passed under us, we went up and down like in an elevator. Steps from our bay led to an alcove, or a nook sheltered by the deck right over the huge twin propellers that moved the ship. During the storm, I often sneaked up the steps and hung on to a stanchion as each wave lifted and then lowered the stern. Following a crew member’s advice to drink black coffee and not eat more than crackers and cheese, I never got sea sick, though many fellows did.
In Korea, at the air base near Kunsan on the west coast, a hurricane came in from the Yellow Sea. The roofs of our huts and buildings were weighed with sandbags. Planes were flown to safer bases. We hunkered down in Quonset huts and other buildings for several hours. It rained so hard the base was flooded. That night, when a siren went off indicating an enemy snooper plane was near, one guy who usually went to bed drunk, jumped up, ran out the door and leaped into the slit trench full of water! We pulled him out, choking and cussing!
