DSC03425Coming up on a year ago, Carol and I had a important decision to make. Stay or go? This massive storm was about to pound us, with expected 12-20 foot storm surge. I had been asked to be on the “Hurricane Response Team” so I had made a decision. She didn’t want me to worry about her while I was working (speaking from experience, all daylight hours) so she went to Lorena to stay with Marie and Keith until further notice.
I had planned to stay at Mont Belvieu Station with other co-workers as we had done in the past. We were released from work to take care of things at home Thursday mid-morning, and told we couldn’t stay at the station. Carol had already left for Lorena, so I was left to ride it out at home. I went to get Belle and bring her home and stayed connected, I set the rear feet down to stabilize her.
With the truck and trailer parked in the driveway, I proceeded to complete the window covers for the house with plywood and Ply-Lox clips. Friday was spent picking up anything that would fly in the wind. The storm was expected to hit Friday night late or early Saturday morning. I had everything I needed to weather the storm, but my girl friend.
I received many phone calls from family and friends, checking on me. No, I am not Crazy, yes I will be fine. All was ok at this point. I watched TV untill the cable went out about 11:30pm, so I went to bed. I knew I needed to go to sleep before the wind started. I woke up hearing a loud roar from the wind at 3:00am, power was out. I went into the living room to look outside using a flashlight. Flashes of light off the rain as it went horizontal across the yard. I was looking for tree limbs or trees on the ground in the front and back yard. We were doing good so far. I cracked open the window to get some air flow, nice and cool. I went back to sleep at some point.
At about 5:30am I woke up with this “total silence” it was very strange. It was getting light, so I went ouside to look around. What a mess, but it had been worse after Alicia in 1983. No trees were down, we were very lucky. 4 of 5 houses around us had trees in or on their house. The truck and trailer was riding the storm very well.
The wind started from the other direction, not as bad as it had been, but very strong. Again I could see the rain going horizontal. I sat out this part of the storm trying to nap and talking to “everyone”. My cell phone worked fine through out the storm. I had several co-workers check on me, or I checked on them.
I was releived when daylight came. I could see the neighborhood better. “WOW” what a mess. We were missing a Hot Tub cover, I know I had strapped it down.
My shop and our house was good, I found our cover in the neighbors back yard.
Work was crazy as expected, working 24/7 as needed. I pulled our rig out to Mont Belvieu, and connected to the power we had from the station generator.
Carol was ready to come home, no water, sewer, or power in Baytown. We can make it. come on home. I pulled our rig back home and parked in the driveway again. My girl friend came home and we setup camp. A cool front blew through which was wonderfull. After a couple of days we were able to borrow a 3k watt generator from work. We also had unlimited ice from work, this helped us save most of the food from the freezer. We had been eating from this supply for a couple days already. We needed to do something with our fresh peaches we had just stored that summer. Lets make jelly, what a job that was. The only light was from the generator, and it was “HOT”, I don’t remember how many jars we did that night, but it is something we will allways remember.
This is where the adventure begins, we would discover whether we could survive living together in Belle. We had just purchased her in June, and had used her a couple of times. We were fortunate compared to our neighbors. 16 days after the storm, the power came back on. Work had gone back to normal or close to normal.
We did it, we can live together in the close quarters of a 25ft. Airstream travel trailer. We decided to take some time off work, so checked out everything in the house after the power was back on. We broke camp, packed up Belle and went camping in the Hill Country. More memories to go in the “Book Of Belle”

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