Senior Moments

Hurricane Ike heading toward Houston, September 12, 2008.

As I write this Hurricane Ike is heading toward Houston.  The news of this hurricane just keeps going from bad to worse.  It now looks as if the storm surge is going to go up the Houston Ship Channel, which has been described as the “worst case scenario” by the National Hurricane Center.

Betsy’s son Bert, his girlfriend Clem and her children made it to Chattanooga from Galveston after an 18 hour trip.  At least they made it safely and will be able to get some rest.

Son Mark and his family are still in their Houston suburb.  So far they are still high and dry, although they lost power earlier Friday night.

Everyone keeps talking about what a huge storm this is — much bigger than Katrina was.  What I didn’t realize is that the hurricane is so large that it already has had an impact in Crossville, Tennessee.  Friday we had to run some errands and we noticed that gasoline here in the Glade had gone up 34 cents a gallon from Thursday.  And one of the two gas stations here in the Glade had only premium grade gasoline left available.

Once we got into Crossville all the stations seemed to have gas but the prices were even higher than they were in the Glade.  One station had prices which were $1 above the price we paid on Wednesday!

If gasoline has gone up so much before the hurricane even makes landfall, how high will the price go after it does damage on land?

The presidential election of 1952 is the first I remember in some detail.  I have vague remembrances of the 1948 election, but my recollections of 1952 are much more vivid.

Like most of my male classmates at least, I liked Ike.  We were young and General Eisenhower was a famous victorious general.  Many of us sported “I like Ike” buttons like the one above.

But today I feel much less favorably toward Ike as hurricane Ike heads for Texas.  Betsy and I have been watching this storm with great interest because we have two of Betsy’s sons live in the Galveston-Houston area.

Yesterday we learned that son Bert, with his girlfriend Clem and her two children, have evacuated their home in Galveston.  They are heading to Chattanooga to ride out the storm.  It’s a long drive, but they can get a free room with Bert’s Dad, so they are probably saving money in the long run.

The last we heard from son Mark was that he and his family wouldn’t leave their new home in Seabrook (a suburb of Houston) unless they absolutely had to.  But now the forecasters are talking about a 20-foot storm surge in the Houston area, and I know that Mark’s home is not too far from the water and that the land around there is pretty flat.  We’re anxious to hear from Mark and his family or about them very soon.

No, I don’t like Ike the way I did back in 1952.