Ice storm,
I can remember leaving the night of the big one, and the ice had started doing it's thing. Took the Fleming from route 30 to 73 in Winslow to head South by taking the expressway. I tried to stop at the light by Mr. Bill's and the truck just kept on a going, whilst having a trailor and boat in tow. That, was not...cool. I felt like I was just one step ahead of the nasty bastard yet it was trying to stop me from getting to a favored place I called second home way back when. Quite a far ways from Waterford.
I headed South. When I stopped over in Santee South Carolina, just after crossing majestic Lake Marion, to rest and watched the news, it was cold unlike they cared for down there but fine by me. I recall I had a wonderful steak at Jake's Steaks and enjoyed a drink with the owner, Bob Finney, a tradition for me by that time. You all up here was havin' a damned nasty time. My mom and dad when I called just told me it was bad, getting worse, just keep going South and enjoy myself.
Next day the news still told of Northern nastiness as I passed through Georgia and upper Florida. Still felt cold to the touch on the window when I crossed that border. Not quite there yet I thought.
(long damned state from top to bottom if you've ever done the drive)
I remember the melancholy feeling I got traveling the beltway looking across at a Dade County region still not quite recovered from it's leveling by yet another of nature's rants back in the '90s. Looked like a weapon of mass destruction had wiped the land clean and only streets and foundations, slabs, no basements folks, remained as far as the eye could see.
Friends, the veil of madness just lifts off when you cross the causeway and just have to stop, have to, in Key Largo to walk down to lagoon behind the Holiday inn to see the "African Queen". That vision of loveliness was what sealed my fate so to speak so long ago. Another time, another life.
I continued down to my place on Kyle Way West, on Knights Key, at the base of the Seven Mile Bridge in sunny Marathon FLA, and I was home.
I got out of the truck and the "little round man" as all the neighbors called him, (He being from Tuckerton, we was right at home together) was working on his latest hot rod, a chopped and converted 1940's Ford Ice Cream truck complete with big block and cool new paint job.Every year he had something different.
He was changing out the gears in the Ford Nine inch rear and cussin' the axle that wouldn't pull out. So I shut the truck off and after a two day ride, escaping the Ice Storm from Hell, I lay down on the ground coral driveway helping him line the axle up, to settle the rear, I looked over at the brilliant red blooms all along my friend's starewell and the colorful trees. The wind was warm and kissed me under the truck, and in Jersey it was Hell.
I was not even unpacked, I was no longer tired, I was enjoying my friend and his task on the truck. His wife was walking us out a cold one. Fresh Yellowtail on the grill would come later.
That was my Ice Storm, and it was good.
g.