The Story of Dolly - Part II

By the second day, it was all anyone could talk about.

"Did you hear about Dolly?" people in the elevator would speak to each other as if trading privileged information.

"Yeah, I hear she's heading straight for us."

"What are you going to do?"

"Well stay, of course. I've weathered storms before. It won't be that bad."

But it was that bad.  

We had all hoped that Dolly - which had begun as a small Caribbean tropical storm hardly worth mentioning when we arrived in South Padre - would swing upward in the Gulf, slamming into oft hurricane-pummeled Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama and leaving Texas with some wind and rain, but otherwise intact.  By mid-afternoon, however, the storm path projections had put South Padre Island squarely in Dolly's sights; she would hit us directly sometime in the early morning hours. And worse still, she had gathered speed in the Gulf and had worked herself into a Category 3 Hurricane, gyrating through the shallow waters with winds of close to 100 m.p.h.

Yeah, we were f*****.

In a preemptive strike to try and prevent people from being stuck on the Causeway when the storm hit, the Texas Department of Transportation had closed the only bridge to the mainland - seemingly without warning anyone that they were doing it - thus effectively trapping everyone on the tiny Island while Dolly growled hungrily out somewhere over the horizon, waiting to devour us. It was like some kind of cruel social experiment; I felt like a sailor in the movie Das Boot/U571 when they have to seal up the hatches to prevent losing the whole submarine but condemn me to death by drowning in the process.

It was Utilitarianism - only in this case, our sacrifice saved no one. They were just hanging us out to dry.

The hotel we were staying at - God love em - tried to make the best of the situation. After boarding up the windows and securing the deck chairs, they invited everyone, including children, to the bar for live music, dancing, and $3 Hurricanes. Clever right?

If we're gonna die, we'd prefer to not remember it.

It was a pretty good party, and we all drank and sang and danced as the TV monitors showed the swirling Death Mass encroaching steadily on our location, the broadcasters looking tired and grave. At one point, my Dad leaned in close and said, "Hey, think you could find me a cigarette?" which was a peculiar request since, to my knowledge, Dad did not smoke. "Sure thing, Dad," I said, intoxicated and happy to have been given a top-secret mission to carry out.

Bolstered by liquid courage, I began shotgun asking everyone in the bar if I could bum a couple of smokes - (and actually using this terminology which seemed romantic for some reason) - eventually meeting a Mexican girl named Lemon (or at least, this is how I believe she introduced herself, but it was difficult to wade through her accent with my senses impaired from the gratuitous amount of rum in my system) who worked at the hotel and knew of a kitchen worker who probably had one or two to spare. She vanished and returned in a minute with two Menthol Lights, which I graciously accepted with a "gracias" and a smile, returning to my father covertly with my objective completed.

We stepped outside onto the deck overlooking the pool, and beyond it the beach and then the ocean. The sky was an inky dark like thick black paint, and waves broke ferociously on the shore with loud crashes that seemed amplified in the already formidable wind. It took us a minute to light our cigarettes, our bodies and hands trying without luck to shield the tiny flame from the gale-force gusts.

"You shouldn't start this," my dad said as we looked out into the claws on the storm, the wind bringing salty water to our lips between drags. "Once you start you'll never stop."

I assured him that I could, that a "one cigarette a month" diet had served to satiated my nicotine appetite throughout college. "Addiction has never really been my thing," I replied, smiling, enjoying the feeling of the elements against my skin and the sound of our voices in the night. Since I'd been in college, we hadn't had many chances to talk; it felt both strange and natural, now, to share a moment with my father as an adult instead of as his son.

"Okay," he said, "I'm just telling you from experience."

We finished our smokes and the sparse conversation, then headed back into the hot bar for more drinks and more dancing.

But Dolly beckoned from somewhere in the dark, drawing closer with each passing hour.  The night was far from over.

The Story of Dolly - Part I

Hurricane Sandy is knocking on the door.  New York is pretending that it's not home.

Shhhh! Turn of the lights, idiot! Who invited her anyway?!

With the impending natural disaster closing in on the Eastern Seaboard, I decided now would be a good time - considering that all public transportation has been postponed, everything (including work) has been cancelled, and I can't even leave the house due to inclimate conditions - to resume my storytelling in The Book of Jommy.

Fitting, then, that this story happens to be about the LAST hurricane I weathered, the current one, Sandy, being the second hurricane that has blustered over me in twice as many years. For someone who hates anything "low-pressure-system" related - rain, snow, the discouraging looks I get when I wear flip-flops in the rain and snow - I sure seem to find myself on the business end of these tropical storms more often that most.

Mother nature has made it clear that my happiness is not really a priority to her.

* * * * * * * * *

The Story of Dolly

My dad makes an effort, I'll give him that. Since we've all grown up, moved out, and spread ourselves around the country, he tries to wrangle his offspring in at least once a year, luring us back to Texas with the promise of relaxing, fun-filled - and more importantly, free - family vacations. And it usually works. Credit to our family, we all manage to see each other at least once a year, scraping together money for plane tickets or gas to make the pilgrimage back to the Lone Star State, encouraged by promises of home-cooking (featuring gratuitous portions of red meat and a refrigerator full of beer), parent-funded entertainment, and, you know, family-togetherness-bonding-lovey-stuff-time.

So when Dad announced, in the Summer of 2008, that his annual medical conference would be held in South Padre Island - hands down the nicest beach in Texas and arguably the classiest of the run-down Gulf Coast resort towns  - my siblings and I were thrilled. This meant lounging on the beach, sleeping in a nice hotel, and eating/drinking/doing whatever we wanted - all with virtually no cost to us. (Thank God my dad had done all that pesky Medical School Physician stuff). 

We would take full advantage of this vacation that we could not ourselves afford but desperately believed we deserved. For me, the year had already been stressful - what with barely graduating from college, trying to avoid confronting "adulthood", and being more poor than I had ever been in my life - and I nursed the conviction that I had earned a few days to unwind on my father's hard-earned dime.

In July, the family - nine of us in total - assembled at my Dad's house in Southeast Texas, piling into two cars and driving the five hours to the small island off the coast of Southern Texas. Crossing the causeway that served as the only passage to the mainland by car, I was taken back to the excitement of my childhood, of seeing the ocean for the first time, of smelling the salty air, of palm trees and gulls and sand between toes. As we pulled into the hotel parking lot, the blue skies and light breeze welcomed us, promising to temporarily relieve us of our responsibilities.

Get me a beer. I'm on vacation.

The first couple days were exactly what every vacation should be: excessive amounts of beach-laying, drinking before noon, overeating, and exploring the shitty souvenir shops within walking distance of the hotel. Nothing overly exciting or crazy happened, but we were all okay with this - no news was good news, so to speak, and it was shaping up to be an enjoyable yet not entirely memorable experience.

Little did we know, it would soon become a vacation none of us would ever forget.

...to be continued