Eccentric Flower:199812/the ice storm
From Eccentric Flower
«December 1998 «Eccentric Flower
 |
twenty-six december (retroactive) the ice storm The last leg of the trip down to Chattanooga was a mess. Freezing rain, freezing on the wipers and the edges of the windshield. The speed limit is seventy on most of the interstates in Tennessee. Wow. Got to Chattanooga and things weren't much better. The weather persisted. We had a blackout for about a half hour. Shortly after that, we looked out the window - the house is up on a ridge, and you can see the lights of the town nicely - and Chattanooga was gone. Poof. The whole city was apparently without power. The trees and plants were coated in ice for the next two days. Christmas itself was not especially newsworthy. I enjoyed it, of course, but I can't remember the things we all talked non-stop about, except that I shocked my aunt twice, both sort of "reverse shocks": once when she found out how late I had lost my virginity (and who the other party had been), and once when she found out that I have never tried "recreational" drugs, not once, not even pot. I don't know why people always assume I have, but this is not the first time I've surprised someone with this news. Anyway, we talked about anything and everything, usually until one or two in the morning. When you only see your family once a year or so, and you come from a family of talkers, that's what you miss the most. The children - all my cousins who are really more like nieces and nephews - are getting old enough to be human; that is, I can have a reasonably coherent conversation with them. Maybe the joy of having kids is slowly watching them turn from little crawling alien beings into something you're willing to admit you gave birth to. But it's a long exasperating process .... Nonelvis, who comes from a small, quiet family, only had one major stress attack the entire time, and the next day she was recovered enough to go ice skating with the whole clan. The rink was horribly maintained, but at least I hadn't forgotten how. We went up to Rock City - I'd seen it, but Nonelvis hadn't. It's a tourist trap, but an unusually well-done one, and worth the ten bucks. We want to know who's doing their new ad campaign. They never had one before, really - just "See Rock City" all over the place, an era which is dying. (I bought a book with photos of the old barns whose roofs used to be painted with Rock City messages.) Lookout Mountain, which hadn't gotten back power until the day before, looked like it had been bombed. Trees bent double from ice and many just broken in half. There's nothing like looking at a pine tree too wide for you to span your hands around and realizing that what broke the top half off was only frozen water. © columbine |
