Last summer, my wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table at noontime, discussing I do not know what. Possibly an upcoming vacation, or our children’s adjustment to a new school. But it was August 25, three days before the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and it is likely we were discussing that. There was nothing for us to do regarding that anniversary, and I do not recall that either of us had any particular apprehensions about that day. It nonetheless would have been on our minds. One year previously we were living in a different city in a different home, now all reduced to ruin by a hurricane.We were talking, and I was probably expounding to her on the differences between my old medical practice in flooded-out Chalmette and my new one in Mississippi, or she may have been expressing her concerns about living in a small town after spending her life in so many big ones, when we were interrupted by a loud thump. The lights went out at that same moment, but we did not notice that at the time. The thump seemed loud, though not exceptionally loud to me; but some weeks later I talked to a nurse at my hospital who said he heard the thump in his home also and rushed outside expecting to see a car accident in the street. He lives around the corner and three houses down. It must have been loud.
Through my front window I saw a large branch lying on top of my car. My car, shaded under the new dressing. seemed almost embarrassed in its predicament. I looked up and down the street and could see that every door and porch was darkened with a figure gazing out. I would have to make the best of it as a neighborhood Man, going out and making a show of inspecting my vehicle as if I knew anything about cars.
I stepped out of my front door into the heat. The sky was flawlessly blue, and there was no wind whatsoever. Not a single reason in the world for a branch to fall out of a tree. We had had a little unfavorable weather the night before, but my suspicion was that the tree had been weakened in Hurricane Katrina’s winds a year before. Though our current home is 100 miles from the shore, Katrina shot through McComb, carrying 80 mile-an-hour winds with her. She had created a lot of firewood in McComb. And so I was thinking: One year out, living in a different state, miles from open water, and that storm was still punishing me.
Walking up to my car, I could see that the branch that had landed on it was more than a placid laurel. It was a forked branch, and one limb had gouged the roof of the car, and another had gone straight through the rear window, obliterating it. This branch, this miraculous branch, on its way down, also fell across the utility lines that passed from the utility pole across the street to our house.
And so, in summary, a single branch falling from the tree in my front yard on a clear blue day with zero wind crushed my car, and disabled the phone, internet, electricity, and cable service to my house in one clean shot. If all that was not bad enough, it was two o’clock on a Friday afternoon. What were our chances of getting three different utility services hooked up again in a small town on a Friday afternoon?
The irony ran in every direction to infinity. Oh, all right, I exaggerate, but it wasn’t a good day. I had come home from work about twenty minutes before, and parked in just the right spot for the branch to do maximum damage to my car. I had to be back at work at 2:30, which meant the miraculous branch had a fifty-minute window to do its job. Any other time and it would have found only my driveway. Well, driveway and utility line.
Lugubriously I took our other car to work. My wife, ever the paragon of efficiency, got on the phone. (The cell phone, I mean.) The electric company came out immediately, since the branch had not just cut off our power, it had shorted the power to the entire street. The electric guy repaired the power line, but could not hook up our house. The force of the branch had not simply disconnected the power line, it had jerked the line out of the wall of our house, stripping the electric line inside our wall. We had to get our house rewired.
Second came the cable guy. He had the cable and internet hooked up in minutes.
The phone company called and said they could come in a week.
(It almost goes without saying that, given the relative efficiency of the responders, I would strongly recommend that if you decide to invest in communications, go cable. Our local phone company doesn't even seem to consider its own services essential.)
When the electric repairman told us we needed our household wiring fixed before he could reconnect us, we called a local electrician for an emergency repair. He came by about four o’clock, and had our house electricity-ready in an hour. We called the electric company back, and were told that we could not get electricity again until the new wiring was inspected by the City of McComb.
Then we called the city of McComb . . . . AWOL until Monday, of course. If there is a certainty in life, it is that government officials do not make themselves available on weekends for emergencies. (Katrina hit Sunday night — remember?) Without electricity, we packed all of the food in our refrigerator into ice chests, hauled the chests in darkness to our one operating car, and spent the weekend with relatives. We hoped to return on Monday and pull things together then.
I do not believe in fate. The stars, or the forces of nature, or the spirits of the dead do not in my estimation conspire to fix events in accordance with some kind of twisted cosmic logic. Yet, when things like this happen, I can certainly see why ancients, with no other explanation available, might have thought differently. The coincidences here mounted and mounted. One year ago with Hurricane Katrina: we lost our home, communications, and one of our cars, and had to evacuate to a relative’s home. This year, the same. One year ago, the major delay was slow government response to disaster. This year, we were forced out of our house for several days because the city government would not respond to our phone calls. Last year, days after the storm we were on the phone with insurance companies. I am certain my car insurance company was not happy to hear from me again on the Katrina Anniversary.
The second time around it was not quite so bad. On Monday we came back home, and prevailed upon the city to inspect our house. We got the utilities back up the same day. As for my car, I lost it for two weeks to the body shop, but got it back in pristine condition, which is more than I can say for the car I lost to Katrina. Final repair cost, $4,500.
A week after the Great Fall my wife made a few more phone calls and arranged to get the offending tree chopped down. It was gone in two weeks. A fellow came by and looked the tree over, gave us an estimate, and we made a deal. Chopping down a fifty foot tall oak is not something I take lightly, but this was not a tree that had treated our house kindly. One of the mighty limbs of this oak fell on our house during Hurricane Katrina three months before we bought it, tearing a ten foot hole in the living room ceiling. Now, one year later, this happens. We were not going to wait to see if a third branch was going to fall.
A few days after the agreement, four workers showed up at our house and started shearing off the largest branches and carting them off. Then they crosscut the trunk, leaving only a stump three-and-a-half feet in diameter. At last they came with a huge chipper that ground the trunk to bits, tossing strings of white oak fibers all over our lawn. There was nothing left but mulch. Now I park my car in the deadly spot with confidence.
Fate had deprived us of house and car but this time we got both back much more quickly and easily than the first time. To ensure that Fate did not get the last word, in retaliation we deprived nature of one of her proud trees. It has, however, not escaped my notice that there are a two more oaks just like the first standing in our back yard. It is possible that these two are whispering to one another in the fall winds, plotting to get even.
My wife thinks so. She has the tree cutters on speed dial and has put all the trees in the back yard on notice.