We are busy busy preparing for Hurricane Milton.
Our house is concrete block and stucco, the metal roof hurricane-strapped, the hurricane-glass windows shuttered. It’s a ranch style with a hallway so long, I often keep two sets of essentials on either end to avoid the trek back and forth.
A small silly problem.
A saving grace, this bunker. Among several. Our neighborhood sits on a geographically uncommon bluff on Florida’s east coast, locating us in flood zone E. This zone is the last to receive orders to evacuate and requires no purchase of flood insurance. Yet, we purchased flood insurance anyway.
Homeowners insurance does not cover flooding caused by a natural weather occurrence. Translated: if the roof goes and the rains come in and makes your home a swimming pool in “no need for flood insurance” zone E, homeowners insurance will not cover the damage.
Florida insurance is funny in a not so funny way.
Odd funny though. Florida Power and Light cleared the vegetation off the transformer last week. The line connects three homes. Following power loss due to weather or the flapping of a rogue palm frond, our line shared with two neighbors is typically the last to reconnect.
I am grateful our chances for power loss in this storm are reduced simply due to plain dumb luck.
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My parents first home in Florida was a ranch. Concrete block stucco, reminiscent of a NASA blockhouse. The roof was tar and gravel. As kids, we’d climb up and pick off what we called pebbles - usually in confrontation with other kids - meaning throwing small shiny rocks at each other that could put an eye out.
Kids caught playing around on the roof by their parents were typically assigned to zone P: punishment.
The house had been a model home. Lots of feet had traipsed the floor plan and signed contracts for tract homes in the built-in garage realtors used as an office. We hadn’t moved in for long before experiencing our first hurricane. The model home sign was still posted in the front yard. The winds whipped that sign with no mercy. Finally, it broke free and slid down the rainy street like a skimboard.
That hot mopped tar and gravel roof held though.
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“Hurry” was written in a Meg Pokrass workshop. The prompt directed us writers to conceive a story employing misconceptions. Meg typically listed a few fabulous words of choice likely never to enter a writer’s writing mind, words that tended to jumpstart the imagination in some magic Meg way.
It was summer and I had hurricanes on my mind. What could be more fierce than a mother of a hurricane?
“Hurry” was published online by Fictive Dream as part of Flash Fiction February 2020, a glorious month long celebration of flash fiction, the stories illustrated with exquisite contemporary art.
Read the story here.
Special thank you, editor Laura Black and artist Claudia McGill.
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This post is dedicated to those who call the west coast of Florida home, now faced by Milton, less than two weeks following terrific destruction by Helene.
And never too far from my mind, the residents of East Tennessee and western North Carolina where my family roots run deep.
Good luck to all in the path of this storm.
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Find Meg on Substack at Pokrass Prompts for Creatives here.
Read my favorite poem about a ranch by Zachary Schomburg. “A Novel About A House”, Pulver Maar, Black Ocean, 2019, p. 28.
Zone P!!
Really great to see you pop up here on Substack, Sheree!