Mama’s friend, Delphia had just died after a long battle with cancer. Mama had helped take care of her for about a year. She’d bring Delphia’s family’s clothes to our house once a week and wash them, dry them and then fold or iron them. I would go out with her to take the clothes back, but Mama would make me wait in the car. She didn’t want me to see how sick Delphia was. They buried her on that Sunday as everyone was scurrying around getting ready for the hurricane. Mama, Linda Ann, Junior and I went to church that morning as usual. Daddy went with us that Sunday and took us to lunch at Hank’s Snack Bar in Picayune after church. As we sat eating our burgers, watching the weather become more and more tropical, we were talking about the hurricane they’d named Camile. “It’ll probably wash her body right out of that grave,” Mama said, dwelling on the funeral that was taking place that very hour. “It’s gonna be a bad one!” Daddy replied. Although listening to their conversation, they actually thought it was going to hit New Orleans like Betsy (the one before Camile). I remembered Betsy. We stayed home and the wind blew down Daddy’s shed he had been building (for a long time!) . He had the foundation and the framing for the walls up, but nothing else. Mama had told him it was just as well. My cousins Bridget and Pam and their family lived in New Orleans. They had gotten water in their house during Betsy. Worried for them again, we called them later that Sunday afternoon and urged them to get out of the city and come to Mississippi.
Bridget and Pam’s parents decided to stay in New Orleans, but our relatives from Slidell began to arrive that afternoon to stay with Grandma Polly and Grandpa. I laughed at my sister, who suggested we stay over there too. We were at the dinner table at the time, and the thought of staying anywhere but our house was funny to me. We went to bed at our usual time, only to be awakened by Mama at midnight. The power was out and the wind was really loud. She moved us all into their room, where we stayed and listened to the little transistor radio. At some point, the radio announcer said that the eye of the storm was about eight miles north of Picayune. “That’s right on us!” mama exclaimed. Daddy was sitting on the side of the bed ringing his hands. Mama began to cry, and we did too. We all prayed together, harder than we had ever prayed, there in the floor holding hands. The walls of my parents little room were literally breathing and we could hear the snaps of the trees as the wind bent them to the ground. It seemed like hours that we were confined to their room. I didn’t think we were going to come out of the storm alive and I don’t think Mama and Daddy did either.
Then all of a sudden a “hush” came over us. No wind, no rain beating against the house, not a sound at all. Our ears strained to hear a single noise. “It’s over!” I said. “No, it’s just the eye,” Mama answered. Then we all went into the living room where, according to the flashlight Mama was holding, there were leaves all over the living room floor and it was soaked. We looked out the front door to my Grandma Johnson’s house to see if there were any signs of life and they signaled with a flashlight and called out that they were okay. Then we looked to the left and saw that there were similar lights and sounds coming from Grandma and Grandpa’s house.
“Let’s get y’all over to Polly’s,” Daddy said. “I can’t tell how much structure damage we have had over here and their house is on a slab, so I think we’ll all be much safer over there for the backlash.” So we all proceeded out the back door. There were trees everywhere. We had to climb over them and the fence that was now down and partially covered by trees. It seemed like a really long trek for what was only a few yards to Grandma Polly and Grandpa’s house.
Once in, Grandma lay quilts on the floor in her living room for us, beside the many kids that were already sleeping on other blankets and quilts. But we wouldn’t get much sleep, because the winds had already started howling outside again. I had lain awake until nearly dawn, making sure that the storm had passed and only then had I finally gotten a little sleep.
I know what they mean when survivors of tragedies explain brightness and clarity after their events, because the next day was the brightest I had ever seen. I don’t know if it was because of all the trees that were now either gone or void of leaves, or if I was just thankful to be alive. That morning after Camile had hit, we gazed at the huge fallen oaks and pecan trees in our yard. We realized then that they all had fallen just beside the house, missing our roof and the very room in which we had hunkered down the night before. Had any one of the trees fallen on our house, it would have been a devastating tragedy for our family. So we were indeed thankful to be alive.
The task of cleaning up was an arduous one by itself, let alone the fact that we had no power for air conditioners or even fans. Our freezers that were filled with the vegetables Mama and Grandma had been canning all summer were slowly thawing out and the food had to be cooked. Thankfully, we had a gas stove, so Mama cooked and cooked. We were very ill prepared, however, soon the batteries in the transistor radio had weakened and we had no outside communication with the world. The last we had heard was that it would be weeks before we would see power in our area. This meant that our pump could not operate to give us water and more thawing and more heat.
In the evenings before dark, we took bath cloths, towels and soap and went down to Stanfield, the small stream near the house, where we bathed in our swim suits. It was cold and refreshing.
But night seemed to come really early in McNeill. There were no lights other than those of Mama’s antique kerosene lanterns, and that fuel had to last, so we used them sparingly. Though we were tired from all the work in the yard, our nights were spent battling mosquitoes, who were drawn to us by the sweat on our bodies. The screens on the windows had been destroyed by the storm, and there was no way to keep them from coming inside.
Hurricane Camile was a life-changing, humbling event for everyone in South Mississippi. We realized just how little we really needed to get by. And it was weeks before we got the news that the Gulf Coast, only about thirty minutes away, was completely destroyed by the hurricane. Once our power came back on, we were able to see pictures of the slabs that were left where beautiful beachfront homes once stood. Hearing that, we realized again, just how fortunate that we were to have our homes, even though they were damaged, and how fortunate we were have each other. We took care of each other. There was no FEMA or MEMA coming to our rescue, just the goodness of folks who sent food and clothing by way of the Red Cross. There were no big trucks showing up with ice and no water given out.
When I think of Camile, I am reminded of similar words from Scarlet O’Hara, when I say that “I will never be unprepared for a hurricane again.”
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