Only in Florida by Caren Schnur Neile

Author:Caren Schnur Neile
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

WHY DID THE MANATEE CROSS THE ROAD?

Hurricanes tend to be an unhappy feature of Florida life, but to paraphrase Tolstoy, each of them is unhappy in its own way. From August 9 to 15, 2004, Hurricane Charley attacked the state’s southwest, making landfall with winds of 150 miles per hour. It was one of the strongest such storms to ever hit the United States and the worst in that part of Florida since 1960. Afterward, residents of the area began to talk about their lives in terms of pre-Charley and post.

Laurie Martin and her family sat out the storm in their little two-story home on Fort Myers Beach, a sugar sand paradise on the north end of Estero Island on Florida’s southwest coast. I was introduced to Laurie by telephone after meeting her neighbor Russ when I performed at the beautiful Fort Myers Beach Library. “You want a great only-in-Florida story?” he asked me. “You’ve got to talk to Laurie Martin.” When he sketched the outline of it, I couldn’t wait to talk to her.

Spoiler alert: The Martins, thankfully, survived the storm just fine. This story is about surviving parents.

WHEN YOU’VE LIVED IN an area twenty years, and you’ve gone through your share of hurricanes, you think you know what to expect. Besides, evacuation is a mess. Not only do you hit the highway with thousands of other cars, but you also have no way of defending your home against nature—or vandals. What’s more, at one time on Fort Myers Beach, you couldn’t return after the storm until everything had been officially evaluated for safety, which added considerably to the general confusion and disorientation, not to mention expense, of displaced homeowners. So when the area was placed under mandatory evacuation in advance of Hurricane Charley, and Laurie Martin’s mother told her she was concerned about her staying in the house, Laurie told her she had everything under control.

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