Against the Odds

Home > Other > Against the Odds > Page 11
Against the Odds Page 11

by John L. Pendergrass


  Everyone agrees there’s a lot to admire. The Swiss love land, nature, and tradition. They are thrifty and industrious, you never hear of a prodigal Swiss. Cleanliness and punctuality are so engrained that they must be part of the Swiss DNA.

  When we reach the Top of Europe we find glaciers, skiing, ice caves, ice sculptures—the whole winter panoply in the middle of July. The Jungfraujoch complex is packed with tourists, I never knew so many people could fit on a mountaintop.

  The run over to Zermatt takes most of a day but we’re in no hurry. Train travel in the Swiss Alps is a treat, not a chore. Some people pay big money to take day long train trips just to look at the scenery.

  The small mountain village of Zermatt is tucked away in a deep valley dominated by the majestic Matterhorn. This is Switzerland’s most famous peak. If the Swiss needed an official mountain, the Matterhorn would be the one. Each year, more than 3,000 alpinists climb the Matterhorn, more than the rest of the Swiss summits combined.

  Zermatt is an idyllic place, reachable only by train. Transportation around town is mostly on foot, although a few electric vehicles and horse-drawn cabs are allowed.

  Patricia and I spend a full day hiking to the top of the Klein Matterhorn and enjoy probably the best view of the entire trip. It’s a little harder than we thought so the next day we opt for the rack railway to reach the Gornergrat.

  There are a couple of St. Bernard dogs at the mountain top, available for photo opportunities for eager tourists like us. These dogs are lovable and adorable and we are all smitten. We may forget these strange sounding German names attached to all these Swiss mountains, but we won’t forget the St. Bernards. When push comes to shove, it’s hard to beat a good dog.

  After spending our entire trip on the German-speaking areas of the country, the three of us head to Geneva, the largest city in French speaking Switzerland.

  Geneva is a beautiful city, nestled in a little nook, nearly surrounded by France, fronting on Lake Geneva. The waterfront with its jet d’eau and quaint lake steamers attracts thousands of visitors.

  This is a global city, a worldwide center of diplomacy. The United Nations, the International Red Cross, the World Health Organization, and many other agencies have a big presence in Geneva. There’s a bureaucrat on every corner, the cost of living is out of sight.

  The Geneva Conventions, dealing with humanitarian rules in wartime, were signed here. The city prides itself on being a neutral ground for dealing with many of mankind’s biggest problems, and it promotes itself as the Peace Capital.

  I’m happy to be in a place where I can talk to people, ask questions, read the signs. Everyone I meet in Geneva is pleasant and polite and on the move, most seem to be from somewhere else.

  My group leaves no stone unturned in our exploration of Geneva. We feel like we’ve done justice to the mountains, and we don’t want to shortchange Switzerland’s second largest city.

  We get frisked and photographed before touring the United Nations. It’s the old League of Nations building and is much more beautiful than the UN headquarters in New York. Next comes the nearby Red Cross museum. I never realized this organization did so many different things in so many places.

  One afternoon we wander through the old town and visit the Cathedral of St. Pierre. This is John Calvin’s church and it pays homage to his Protestant God. You can still see Calvin’s chair, almost 500 years old and no worse for the wear.

  After such an adventurous trip, heading home is a difficult chore. Switzerland is a wonderful country—the picturesque mountains and countryside, the clean and efficient cities, the sturdy and industrious citizenry. I’m glad I came to this beautiful place.

  I’M FINALLY back home in Mississippi. Just a few weeks have passed since my trip to Switzerland, and I haven’t even bothered to unpack my bicycle. My bike case is stuck in the corner of my storeroom, a forgotten reminder of my titanic struggle in the mountains. Switzerland seems like a distant, yet pleasant, dream. The country floats in and out of my mind. I can still see myself struggling across the finish line to the drunken acclaim of the Swiss citizenry. It never fails, memories improve with time, the pain and suffering disappear while the high points grow and endure. I find myself yearning for that clean, cool Swiss air; I’m ready once again to pedal effortlessly to the top of the mountain.

  My friends have no interest in my IRONMAN® stories; they heard enough the first go round. Everyone listens politely but I can detect an undercurrent of poorly disguised indifference. Mentally and physically, I’m at a low point; no one is paying the least bit of attention to me. My motivation is nowhere to be found, I’m suffering in the brutal August heat, wishing that fall would hurry up and arrive.

  Then, one Monday morning, Hurricane Katrina strikes and things change in a big way. The minor annoyances of life, the things that mean next to nothing, are gone. They’re replaced by major problems. In just one day, my life is reduced to the basics—food, water, and shelter—everything else becomes superfluous, meaningless, unimportant.

  Hattiesburg, my hometown, is located about seventy miles from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It’s a small town in a convenient spot; New Orleans, Mobile, and Jackson are within 100 miles. Hattiesburg is a college town, home of the University of Southern Mississippi, with a large medical community and a fairly stable economy. As the Chamber of Commerce likes to say, it’s a great place to live, work, and raise a family. Life moves at a good pace, but you still feel like you’re in control of your time and energy. People are friendly and polite, as interested in you as you want them to be.

  Unfortunately, Hattiesburg is also located in an area prone to hurricanes. Unlike the coastal areas, there’s little danger from flooding this far inland, but hurricane force winds and secondary tornadoes can wreak havoc during any storm.

  A pattern seemed to develop here in Hattiesburg. Every few summers a new hurricane would threaten South Mississippi. Many times the storm would turn away from our coastline at the last moment and strike some less fortunate area. We would all watch the poor souls in Florida or Texas digging out of the rubble and would breathe a sigh of relief, thinking “thank goodness this one missed us.” A few weeks later we would already have forgotten the name of the hurricane. It’s hard to remember something that didn’t directly harm you.

  As the years passed, the hurricane warnings in my area produced an almost routine response, these were habits polished by the passage of time. Hurricane preparation was a ritual that everyone, to varying degrees, engaged in.

  For several days we would track the storm, watching the weather bulletins, speculating on the direction and intensity, hauling out old hurricane tales, hoping the little red icon would weaken or turn away. If things continued to look bad a day or two before the projected landfall, there would be a big rush to Walmart to stock up on water, food, batteries, and other supplies. The shelves would be stripped bare as if a swarm of locusts had struck the store. Long lines would form at all the gas stations as some of the more prudent prepared to evacuate. A few industrious, well-prepared citizens would break out their gasoline-powered generators that had been in storage since the last storm threat.

  The highways from the Gulf Coast and New Orleans would have bumper to bumper traffic as residents fled town. Local motels and storm shelters would fill with people escaping the hurricane.

  Then the winds would hit Hattiesburg. If it was a bad storm, we would lose power for a day or two, a few streets would get blocked by falling trees or debris, some signs or awnings would bounce along the pavement. Local television reporters would stand bravely in the fierce winds, relaying reports back to the main studio

  Over the decades, the hurricane threat in Hattiesburg was less than impressive for most of us. We would miss a few days of work, but in a week or so everything would be back to normal and everyone would begin looking forward to the important things in life, like the beginning of the school year and college football season.

  Storm survivors, like military gen
erals, are almost always reliving the last great battle, preparing for the past. My hurricane battles had all been small ones. I had been underwhelmed by the whole experience, and I had become very complacent. My memory, like the rest of my body and soul, had weakened with time. I no longer went to Walmart for supplies. I didn’t get in line to fill up my vehicle, I didn’t even worry. On the inside, I used to laugh at those people who ran around like busy ants, preparing for a storm that never arrived. I was a real life grasshopper, looking forward to the rain and wind and a break in the summer heat.

  Sometimes ignorance isn’t bliss.

  Hurricane Katrina arrives in Hattiesburg late one morning bearing sustained winds of 100 miles per hour. The storm starts in the Bahamas, later crossing the southern tip of Florida before entering the Gulf and intensifying. It crosses the southern tip of Louisiana before making final landfall near the town of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

  Over the weekend, I watch the storm develop with a mixture of annoyance and excitement. It’s like watching a NASCAR race, most of it is boring and repetitious but there is always a chance that a big crash will occur. There’s a type of perverse allure in waiting for the twisted and bloody wreckage that might come.

  I’m at home around nine o’clock in the morning when the wind and rain pick up. Soon the debris begins to fall and in just a few minutes the power goes out at my house. I’m stuck with no computer, barely enough light to read, and a home that is more than a little stuffy. These are the danger signs of incipient boredom. I’m nothing if not resourceful, so I jump in my car and drive to my office a few miles away. We have underground utilities there, so I should be able to work without problems until the pesky storm passes.

  On the way over, I find that the wind is stronger than I expected and I have to make a couple of detours to avoid fallen trees. Still, I remind myself that this is much better than sitting around at home with nothing to do.

  I’m at my office all alone for maybe 15 minutes before the power crashes. I sit there for the next three hours while the wind blows and blows. It dawns on me a few hours into the storm that I should be concerned about Polly and John, who are still at home. By this time the phones are down, and there is no response on the land lines or the cell phone. So, I sit there in the dark and wonder why I do such stupid things. Why don’t I think ahead? Why don’t I realize that, just because something has never happened before doesn’t mean it would never happen?

  The 100 miles per hour winds feel, sound, and look bad. My office shivers and shakes, the noise is like a truck motor, as limbs and other debris blow by. The rain comes in great horizontal sheets. I’m not smart enough to move to the interior of the building or to lie on the floor or cover myself with a mattress or cushion. (This is standard storm survival advice, repeated dozens of times each hurricane season.) Instead, I just sit and look out the window for two to three hours. I’m still not totally sold, this is a little more than I expected, but I’m hoping it will be over soon.

  Around 2:00 p.m., the wind lightens and I head outside to take a look around before driving home to check on my family. It looks like a bad scene from a horrible disaster movie. Fallen pine trees are scattered about like broken matchsticks. Some are lying flat, others half broken, others leaning precariously. Massive trees that have survived decades are sheared to pieces in seconds.

  These beautiful trees have created an obstacle course, a gauntlet to run as I make my way home. The roads are free of traffic, not even a police car or emergency vehicle is about. The entire front of one business has collapsed, leaving it open to the world like a dollhouse. I turn down one street but I find it blocked by a downed power line so I have to back track. Most of the other routes also have fallen trees across the roads. I’m forced into detour after detour, sometimes driving into people’s yards in order to skirt by fallen trees. Eventually I make it to within a half mile of my home before abandoning my car to hike in.

  It is not a welcome sight. Three giant trees have fallen onto my house, crashing into one of the bedrooms. My son John is at home and had just managed to get out of the way.

  John, Polly, and I are relieved to see each other; we have all imagined the worst. The car ride home has left me stunned, this was a terrible storm. I’m left with a healthy respect for forces bigger than I am.

  If you watch television, this is the time in the natural disaster story when a distraught survivor appears on camera and says something like, “Thank God no one is hurt, I’ve got my loved ones, all of this can be replaced.” That is not me. I never suspected my family would be hurt so I’m not so much relieved as I am crushed. The monster pine trees in my bedroom have done nothing to improve my disposition. I want my house back.

  I am a slow learner, but I eventually realize that I’m more fortunate (or less cursed) than a lot of people who endured this hurricane. In my county, seven people died as a result of the storm; in Mississippi the number is more than 235, while overall the toll is nearly 2,000. My home is simply damaged, while most buildings along the Gulf Coast are completely destroyed. In New Orleans, the floods are just as devastating. Everyone I know and love is alive and well; for many others the survival of friends and family is in question.

  By late afternoon the wind and rain have mostly died off, and the three of us go outside to survey the damage. We are all numb, sort of in a trance, too drained to say much of anything. A few neighbors are milling about, but no one has escaped damage. Roofs are torn asunder, trees block the roads, and many houses are crushed.

  Katrina seems to have thumbed her nose at storm preparations. Those with foresight, those who did their best to prepare for the hurricane, those who played by the rules sometimes fared worse than the lackadaisical disorganized souls like me.

  Katrina leaves me full of self-pity, I’m cursing my bad luck, feeling very sorry for myself, when I get a lucky break. Cell phone service is practically nonexistent after the storm, but somehow I get a call through to my friend and contractor, Brian. He is in his home outside of town, blocked in by fallen trees, but he promises to come check my home the following day.

  This is great, I have hit the jackpot. After a hurricane, a good repairman is priceless. Everyone has problems, everyone needs help, and I have found a good man whom I can trust. Most people are forced to wait weeks for home repairs.

  My friend Brian shows up the morning after the storm and starts to work on the pine trees in my house. I’m very appreciative. I give him praise, water, food, money, anything he wants or needs that I can provide. Three days later, the cut trees are stacked at the curb and my roof is covered with a huge blue tarpaulin.

  South Mississippi turns into a blue tarp wonderland. They are everywhere, dotting the rooftops, giving a checkerboard flavor to the skyline. For many years to come the blue tarps would be a universal ornament, a colorful reminder of Katrina’s power.

  For the next couple of weeks, life is reduced to bare essentials: ice, water, and food. There is no power, no air conditioning, no running water, no working toilets, no telephone, no computer. The heat is oppressive; it’s like spending every moment of your life in a sauna or steam room. Sometimes I move a mattress outside to sleep, but it remains overbearingly warm, even at night. Pretty soon, I start to smell bad, like most everyone else. It’s a lingering funky odor that intensifies as the days progress. I miss my running water.

  There is one place that is almost like heaven, a true sanctuary from the heat. That is the inside of my car. My favorite pastime consists of driving around the neighborhood in air- conditioned comfort, checking out the hurricane damage, listening to soft music. Sometimes I almost forget how bad things are.

  For me, a typical day consists of rising at dawn, eating some horrible-tasting canned food topped off with warm, bottled water, working like a dog in the hot sun, complaining to everyone who will listen, dreaming of taking a shower, then finally falling asleep not long after sundown.

  For the first time in many years, the need to exercise never enters my min
d. I’m working out, but it isn’t running, swimming, or biking, it’s basic manual labor. I’m hot and sweaty, my muscles and joints ache constantly. At the end of each day I feel like I’ve finished a marathon.

  Around ten days out, I get together with a couple of my running buddies for a short jog. We take turns leading each on various routes designed to show the hurricane damage. One street takes us past a house where three crushed cars remained wedged in a collapsed garage, another turn leads us to a home where you can look through the front of the house all the way to the backyard. The house has literally been chopped in two. Each one of us tries to outdo the other; it is a sad, pathetic form of entertainment.

  My bike survives the hurricane, just missing a crush from a fallen carport beam. The roads aren’t clear enough to ride safely for many weeks. Swimming pools are among the last sites to reopen. This isn’t a time for triathlon, it’s a time to survive and rebuild, a time to give thanks and look to a better future.

  The Katrina recovery does wonders for me. I’ve always leaned toward the easy side and I’m shamed and inspired by watching other people giving up their time to help those less fortunate. There’s a lot to do in life. These people could have stayed at home and tended to their own needs. I’m not a cynic, I’m not even a skeptic, but I do need to be reminded from time to time of the inherent goodness of human beings.

  Most bad things fade with time and it’s the same with Katrina. We all live in the present and look toward the future. Yesterday’s problems are soon replaced by fresher challenges.

  By late October the heat has vanished. Most of the roads are clear, the mountains of debris that once lined the edges of the streets have been carted off to landfills. There are big empty spaces where there used to be trees and buildings. Most of the repairs on my home are completed. My new roof blends in nicely with all the other new ones. I’m ahead of many people; there are still a lot of blue tarps in town, indicating work to be done.

 

‹ Prev