I rode past it all down to the Battery. This was when I knew we were in serious, perhaps dire, circumstances. Even though it was low tide, the water was crashing over the sea wall. Folks lined their porches along the sea wall on East Battery much as they had when the firing upon Fort Sumter commenced. It was quite a spectacle.

            After getting doused a number of times talking to everyone on their porches, it was time to go home. I rode my bike back to Montagu Street, washed my clothes and switched on the television. We didn’t have cable back in those days, so Charlie Hall was pointing out how Hugo looked like it would make landfall within 50 miles.

            I decided to switch channels to Channel 24 which at the time was an independent station. Bob Waters, the de facto spokesman had a show akin to a call-in radio show. Instead of talking about government malfeasance, Waters spent the whole show talking about the oncoming storm.

            At the end, he said, “You have an hour’s window to leave. If not, batten down the hatches, and God bless you.”

            That little comment mad me uneasy, but back in those days Perry Mason came on, and I became lost in the story as Hamilton Burger arose and said,” See here, Mason.” At the end, of course, a grown man accompanied by dramatic music began to wail while cringing, “She was going to expose me. Don’t you see?” -- Head in hands, “she was going to ruin me.”

            Then the weather came back on informing me that Hugo was now dead on.

I spent the next three hours making sure that everything had a place and everything was in it. At four, I turned the television back on. All the local officials came on to tell those who were left that there was no doubt about it. The storm would hit around 10 to 11 pm – in other words in seven hours.

            I was fine until Joe Riley told us that everyone who lived on the first floor would be visited by a Charleston city policeman. The storm surge at this point would rise to the level of the second floor of City Hall. If we were to stay, we had to sign a waiver explaining that we knew the risks of a tidal surge. We also had to provide our next of kin.

            My bowels turned to jelly.

            After staring at the monster bearing down all my friends, all our history and contemplating the fact that nothing would ever be the same. I realized that paralysis never helped a soul. I got up and checked everything.

            The police did come; I signed the waiver, and thus began the show. I decided to walk our long haired dachshund down the street. The rain was thin and parallel to ground.

            One of my best friends called from the third floor porch from across the street, “Hey, the whole family is up here. Come on up and have a drink.”

            I was not totally averse to that thought, but I replied, “I have to wait until my wife gets home.”

            This boy, although my best man a scant five months before, knew about wives the way fish understand 20th Century art. That would be a lesson he would later learn all too well in time, but at the time, he mocked, “What? You have to have a permission to have a drink. God, what’s wrong with you?”

            My wife did come home. Everything was all set. The only way to protect the house was to encase it in concrete. My wife began to prepare, “what could be our last hot meal for a while.”

            I went across the street to my friend’s apartment. I said hello to his cousins, his aunt and a friend and poured my self a drink. My friend and I stood on his porch facing east. The tops of the trees were thrashing the roofs. Up until that point it was a windstorm, but now it was a high gale as tropical storm winds began to blow loose debris down the street.

            My friend took a sip of scotch, then took a long look at a century old chimney on the roof next door and said, “I bet you that will be down by morning.”

            (It was—right on top of his pre-owned Mercedes).    

            No one took the bet.

            Regretfully, I left. I went home to normal dinner, and then true to form, it was time to walk the dog. I walked him a little past Rutledge by the Jenkins-Mikell house. Suddenly two giant Magnolia trees were caught by the wind bending them over the wall onto the sidewalk with a “whoop – whoop” sound.

            Time to go home.

            About 8:30, my bride and I were watching television. One station who later claimed to be on top of the situation played constant re-runs of Three's Company. My thought at the time was that was how then end would come. There would be incoming missiles and we would be forced to watch Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling as we faced obliteration.

            Sitting on the bed, my wife and I watched Charlie Hall and Bill Sharpe announcing that they had to leave. At the time, Channel 5 was on a flood plain on East Bay Street. Channel 4 was at the beach, so it was gone. Only Channel Two was functioning.

            Suddenly a gust of wind came along that made us think we might be on the next train to OZ.

            There was the most ungodly sound as the transformers exploded.

            All at once we were on our own.

            It would be a very long night. 

 

            It’s old cliché that one fears “things go bump in the night.” Like most clichés, there was some truth to it.

            As my wife and I watched “Three’s Company” in the darki which helped us no end for our storm preparations, we could hear trash cans rolling down the street and car windows breaking as well as other more ominous sounds.

            Oddly enough, the phones still worked, and we were getting calls from concerned family and friends. Finally, though, the house began to be hit with real debris of a large and lethal nature.

            The last call I took was from an old friend in Manhattan.

            “Wow, have you seen 48 Hours? You guys are getting a beating.”

            “Well, George, frankly, no I haven’t as two television stations have gone off the air.”

            I was standing next to a window sill watching the rain flow under the storm window and the sill itself. It was parallel to the floor. I found that a tad disconcerting. Suddenly on the other side of the window sill I heard the most God-awful “Thump!”

            I told my friend, “Look, man, I’d love to chat, but I seem to be fighting for my life right now. Call me back in morning, and I’ll let you know how things went.”

            We bade our goodbyes. Little did I know that the storm surge would obliterate phone service for quite a while. George thought I was dead.

            (Incidentally, I nearly was. The thump I heard was a four by six 20 feet long that hit the sill. Another inch either side, and I would be writing this from another dimension.)

            Then my bride of five months and I were alone. There is nothing like facing death with someone you love. It’s probably why we’ve been married for almost 18 years.

            My wife stayed in the bathroom, the most incredibly sensible thing she could do as there were no windows. I, on the other hand, was not quite so wise. The house on Montagu was a single house with the porch facing west. The wind was so intense from the east, that I was able to stand on porch and not even feel a breeze while 10 yards away, hell was in session.

            I saw a lot of stuff: a Toyota go end over end, a roof flying off a house, live oak limbs snapped like twigs and more. There is a perverse connection to nature at its rawest when you are safe from the elements. Needless to say, my wife thought my foray into fray was utterly insane.

            I sat in the bathroom with her, the house shaking like the tumble-dry spin on a washing machine. We sat in a small room in 120 degree heat listening to the weather band (as if it would make a difference) on the radio – our faces lit like Halloween ghouls with flashlights.

            The bathroom on Montagu Street was carpeted. The long-haired dachshund slept right through the storm. His fleas, however, did not. My wife and I were drenched, and the fleas seem to take a total delight in our discomfort and decided to add to it. We were being eaten alive.

            In a fit of what was at the time thought to be brilliance, my wife decided to put a certain skin product used by fisherman to keep mosquitoes away all over the dog. Well, it worked. They left the dog and jumped all over us. Thusly we slathered the lotion all over ourselves.

            So there we were sweating like slave laborers in Viet Nam sitting in a house shaking as though a giant were trying to get the last piece of candy from a box, in the dark with the radio telling us that the eye wall of the hurricane was hitting Charleston. Fleas were performing as though in a circus.

            What a situation it was: Sitting in the dark, covered with fleas with the smells of effluvium (You couldn’t flush the toilet) and Skin-So-Soft permeating our very being.

            And then it got quiet: very, very quiet.  

            After a few minutes of quiet, my wife and I ventured out of the reeking bathroom, redolent of fear sweat, effluvium and Skin-So-Soft (17 years later, I get sick to my stomach when I even get a whiff of that stuff). We walked out onto the porch as did many and stood in the driveway. The water was up over the driveway making it above the tires of the hapless cars on the street. In the eerie quiet, yells of “Is everyone okay?” and “Hey, has anyone seen my roof? (It was found two blocks away the next morning) echoed throughout the pitch darkness.

            There was absolutely no ambient light or noise. Above us, the clear sky, now cleared of the haze of pollution, was absolutely crystal like the skies of the desert. Every star and the galaxy that could be seen with the naked eye sparkled as though they were as far as the moon.

            Below us, however, danger crept stealthily. As we checked on each other, the water level began to rise. When we first stood in the driveway, the water level was over the sidewalk and moved stealthily up the incline. Soon, the escalation beckoned the water to the front stairs up the incline roughly ten feet above the street. Cary and I went up to the second floor to see if our neighbor’s door was locked. It was. Thus was blocked an avenue of safety should we need it.

            Up on the porch the neighborhood continued to regale itself with tales that were both fascinating and terrifying. Despite the dire situation we were all facing, there was nervous laughter and plans made for the next evening. Suddenly, all of that stopped and a hush veiled the entire area. A large dumpster floated down Montagu Street playing pinball with the floated cars. The gravity of the situation slammed us like a linebacker.

            Then we all felt a gust of wind. I hurried my bride back into the house. Right before we returned to safety, we looked down to the driveway. The water had risen to the second step.

            Right as we closed the door, the other side of the hurricane eye wall hit with a vengeance. Luckily, our house was partially protected by a number of houses to our west.

            The house began to shudder like a person rescued from icy river. My wife and I watched with curiosity, alarm then horror as the water began to rise steadily step by step then slowly seep onto the porch.

We began to look for cushions and anything else upon which we could float. We found a child’s life preserver and fitted it to the long-haired dachshund.  The plan was that, were the water to rise to our ankles inside the house, we would try to get to my friend’s house across the street against the hurricane winds and roiling water.

The water began to slowly cover the porch which was 17 feet above sea level. Suddenly, my cute bride began to grab towels and stuff them under the door. I stood bemused as she did so.

Finally, I said, “Honey, that’s the Atlantic Ocean. I’m not sure how much effect towels might have.”

Finally, the water reached the door jam and began to lap over it. Then it stopped.

Thank you, Jesus!

We could hear things begin to tear away from the house and made our way back into the bathroom with dog in a life preserver. The fleas and the smell welcomed us back like long lost lovers, and for the next four hours we huddled pondering our mortality. My wife and I have been contentious since the day we met, so our time was spent playing backgammon listening to snatches of the weather band taking a break now and then to check on the water level that, thankfully, remained where it was.

Finally, around five in the morning the noise began to wane. Things still went bump in the early morning, but we had been up for almost 48 hours so we decided that nap might be in order.

As we lay down on the bed, suddenly in the near distance, we heard the sound of various freight trains rumbling around us. The authorities would later gainsay that there were any tornados, but I beg to differ with all my soul.

As I lay down, my wife asked, “How can you sleep at a time like this?”
            I responded, “When your time’s up, your time’s up.”

We went to sleep little realizing that city that we loved so much was gone – never to return again.

            The Charleston to which we awoke the morning after Hurricane Hugo looked like a nuclear bomb had hit the city. After three hours sleep, my wife and I arose and began to wander the streets in shock and awe. Indeed, there were so many others along with us. We knew probably 80 percent of the people we saw, and there was much discussion about the experience of the night before.

            One thing people don’t think about after a hurricane has hit is the smell. The rivers had risen, and brought up sewage with it as the water flooded the drains. Thousands picked through the debris on the street, climbing over live oaks and huge magnolias that had been felled by the ferocious wind.

            The landscape of old Charleston was gone. We would walk down each block, marveling that one house that was completely untouched stood next to the rubble of the house next to it.

            Normally, it would take us roughly 25 minutes to leisurely stroll from Montagu Street to the corner of Tradd and Church, but because of the debris, it was two and half hours before we stood on that intersection. Again, we knew everyone we saw.

            The media was out in force. Satellite trucks from all of the major networks were everywhere. I was interviewed by NPR, and I understand that the piece ran that afternoon. We of course didn’t hear it.

            We left the house at 8:30 and returned by one pm. Already the staccato sounds of chain saws and hammers had begun -- these were sounds that we would live with for the next four years.

            We got our radio working, and the only station on the air was WPAL-AM, the black station. Although we didn’t have phone service many did, and Bill Saunders, the owner, had opened up phone lines so that people could call in and describe how it was where they were. There were cries of shock and disbelief and the terrible uncertainly of the state of loved ones living elsewhere in the city.

            What I remember, though, was a fellow who called in from West Ashley and asked, “I know this sounds inappropriate, but are there any bars open? I really need a drink.”

            The rest of the afternoon we cleaned out the debris. There was a curfew of 8 pm, and everyone sat on their porches drinking liquor and yelling at friends across the street.

            It would be a year before things got even faintly back to “normal,” but things had changed. We had survived a shift in paradigm.

            The insurance money had transformed a city that had been “too poor to paint, but too proud to whitewash” into a show place within four years. Charleston had been seedy, but charming and full of character. Two years later, the character began to fade as people from off began to buy up the old houses.

            Real money began to flow into the area. Combined with the fact that many older people sold their houses, and by 1996 the entire area had changed. Ten years later, it bears no resemblance to the Charleston in which we grew.

            About a week ago, I had to come to Charleston for a funeral. I had some time, so I thought I would stop and see some old friends downtown. I parked on Pinckney Street and walked around. There were thousands of people on the streets, but I didn’t know one of them.

            The Charleston that I knew the morning after the storm was gone. Many of the old shops were replaced by upscale shops that catered to very wealthy tourists. The friends and relatives who lived downtown that morning were dispersed or dead.

            There is an old joke: “How many Charlestonians does it take to change a light bulb? 10.000: One to change the light bulb and 9,999 to talk about how grand the old light bulb was.”

            Now they are changing the light fixtures, and there’s no left that gives a damn.