BEFORE THE STORMS: HURRICANE SEASON HAS STARTED IN FLORIDA

Before I moved to Florida, I never paid much attention to hurricane season in Florida. Once in a great while, a Florida Atlantic hurricane would stay alive long enough to reach Maine. The last one I'm aware of was Hurricane Bob in  1990. It was an extremely rainy storm. Several roads near my house were flooded. By the next day, however, most of the water was gone.

 The first hurricane to visit Maine that I remember happened when my family was still living in Cumberland. I don't remember the name or the year but it was a wind storm. Our house was mostly surrounded by tall pine trees and many of them were blown down across our long driveway, effectively blocking our car from reaching the road which went by our house, Skillings Road. The next day my father walked about a half mile to the nearest store to buy a few essentials needed by our large family. In those days we had no sophisticated weather computers to warn us of the impending storm and where it might land. Actually, we didn't have television so it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

This season the weather forecasters have given us a list of the possible Atlantic storms by name. I haven't checked to see if my name is one of them and how many they expect. I'll wait until the first storm is on the horizon. 
          A photo of me as a baby sitting in front of our pine-tree-filled yard.