When I was a little boy…

…I lived in southern Florida. And every year there were hurricanes. Sometimes we just caught an edge, and once or twice I went outside and stood (timorously, as I recall) in the eye of the storm.

It could be scary. One time we lost some roofing. Water came pouring into my bedroom. I was convinced the roof would come right off the house and the wind would suck me out to Oz. It didn’t.

In the neighborhoods where we lived the houses all looked the same. They were built of concrete blocks, with reinforced columns every so many feet and no roof overhangs. Oddly, they usually also had big single-pane picture windows which didn’t really make a lot of sense. The windows had bolt anchors built right into the walls at the corners for boarding them up before a storm. I always thought that was cool.

Trees would drop fronds, and sometimes they’d come up by the roots. Sometimes things would flood: Some neighborhood kids hurried out after one storm so they could row their dinghy up and down the street. I was mad about not getting a turn. One time I watched a car rolling backward down the street in front of our house, until it finally hit something.

One time my father didn’t get home from work in time to put up the plywood as promised. Before the storm even officially arrived, that big picture window exploded inward. That was a soggy mess – as I recall the adults ended up replacing the carpet and it’s a wonder nobody was hurt.

But nobody ever was, and I grew up thinking of hurricanes as things you prepare for but don’t really fear – once you’re old enough to know that the preps work to keep you safe. Garages would often flood but the living spaces almost never did as long as the windows and roofs stayed intact. Which they usually did, and if they didn’t then things would get wet. A kid in southern Florida usually didn’t see getting wet as anything to be all that afraid of. And storm or no storm, I grew up with the smell of mold.

I kind of liked hurricanes; they were adventures that gave us something to compare notes on.

Of course we didn’t have any underground infrastructure at all, because the water table wouldn’t have allowed it even if hurricanes didn’t come annually and flood everything. So I can only imagine what sort of clean-up New York has ahead of it, where half the city is underground. In Florida all the water quickly ran off through the drainage canals. In New York? I doubt they’ve got a good place to pump it all to.

Surfing around this morning, I get the impression the wind wasn’t a big problem but the flooding really is. I visited that region when I was younger, decided it wasn’t a place I wanted to live, and haven’t given it much thought since – though I came close to taking a job in NJ one time, I came to my senses in time. Hurricanes didn’t have anything to do with the decision.