Today, 21 September 2024, happens to be the autumnal equinox, and here on Folly Beach, the Edge of America, the weather is perfect, not a cloud overhead, the temperature Edenic, downright Elysian — no flies at Chico Feo, no mosquito swatting needed on my walk home from the bar.
However, today also happens to be the 35th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo. As you can see above, Hugo was, “a mighty, mighty storm.”[1] Ask any Lowcountry resident who opted not to evacuate, and you’re likely to hear tales ranging from extreme discomfiture to abject terror.
Our family – Judy Birdsong, sons Harrison (5) and Ned (3), springer spaniels Jack and Sally, and I-and-I lived on the Isle of Palms, a barrier island that lay in the crosshairs of a cone of inevitability – in other words, Charleston was going to get clobbered by a monster category 4 cyclone.
On Wednesday evening before Thursday’s late night landfall, before we drove to my parents’ house in Summerville to drop off the dogs and spend the night before fleeing further inland to Columbia, I drove downtown to Charleston to hear Allan Gurganus read from his just published novel The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. I bought a copy, had Allan inscribe it, then drove back home and nailed plywood over sliding glass doors.
As it turned out, the novel, which deals with Reconstruction, offered a parallel to what we were about to endure. My father-in-law Ralph Birdsong compared the post-Hugo Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island to the bombed out towns of Europe he witnessed in World War II.
Sullivan’s Island 22 September 1989
Reconstruction indeed.
We left Summerville first thing Thursday morning and arrived at my friend’s Jake’s house around noon where we watched the storm swirl closer and closer to the coast on a television screen. That evening, we had dinner at a restaurant in Five Points. We had been lately listening to Lyle Lovett’s most recently released album, which featured a song called “Here I Am.”
Here’s are the lyrics from the last verse, which is spoken rather than sung:
Look, I understand too
little too late.
I realize there are things
you say and do
you can never take back.
But what would you be if
you didn’t really try?
You have to try.
So after a lot of thought
I’s like to reconsider.
Please if it’s not too late,
Make it a cheeseburger.
When it was time to order our meal, I asked three-year-old Ned what he would like to eat, and he said in a tiny little Lyle Lovett voice, “Please make it a cheeseburger.”
That almost made the entire ordeal worth it.
Almost, but nor entirely. Because the only bridge to the islands was destroyed, we became homeless for 17 long days, moving from family to family, devoured by anxiety. However, once we finally made it to the island via a ferry and walked from the marina to our home, he were delighted to see it standing in one piece. The ground floor had received about two inches of water, a tree had smashed through a back door into our bedroom, the floors were warped, so we had tons of work to perform, but we could sleep upstairs.
Sullivan’s Island Bridge (photo credit Judy Birdsong)
Ever it be so pounded, there’s no place like home.
[1] I copped that quote from the Black spiritual about the Galveston hurricane of 1900.
You Do Hoodoo 