Wednesday, September 20, 2017

In the Eye of a Hurricane




I was once in the Eye of a Hurricane -- much excitement.

By the spring of 1964, I had spent two years at the University of Minnesota, majoring in mathematics, vacillating between becoming an architect or a mining engineer, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

That summer, I read a magazine article about computers and how there would soon be a huge demand for experts in this new field. It sounded exotic and potentially lucrative.

Being an impetuous young adventurer, I decided to become a computer programmer.

On August 10, my 20th birthday, I stuffed my belongings into the trunk of my 1953 Chevy and headed for Florida early the following morning, where I intended to enroll in Miami-Dade Junior College in Miami, one of the three top-rated computer schools in the country at the time.

Four days later, I arrived in Miami and checked into a cheap motel near campus. It was hot, humid and raining. As far as I could tell, I was the only person in Miami wearing socks.

The same day I arrived, a weather disturbance classified as a tropical cyclone moved off the eastern African coast.

After catching up on my sleep, I went to the college campus the next day and registered for fall semester.

The weather disturbance soon reached hurricane force in the Atlantic and was named Cleo.

There was a pool hall across the street from campus with a lunch counter that soon became my unofficial headquarters. I had spent much of my youth in pool halls and felt right at home there.

On August 22, Hurricane Cleo slammed into the French West Indies, causing 14 deaths and much damage.

I eventually found a cheap place to rent near campus. It had a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. It also had cockroaches the size of sewer rats and enough beefy spiders to make a horror movie.

On the morning of August 24, Hurricane Cleo passed south of the Dominican Republic, killing seven people.

Later that same day, it veered into Haiti where damage was considerable and 192 people perished.

Two days later, I was hanging out in the pool hall, wondering why the place was so deserted.

On August 27, the eye of Hurricane Cleo moved onto Key Biscayne. The owner of the pool hall began chasing out customers and preparing for some sort of onslaught.

That’s when I first learned about Hurricane Cleo.

Dominic, the owner of the pool hall, invited me to join his family and a few guests at his house, a block from the pool hall, for a hurricane party.

It sounded better than waiting it out with cockroaches and spiders so I accepted.

Classified as a category-four hurricane, Cleo had sustained winds of 135 mph, with gusts up to 160 mph. It hit Miami at full throttle.

At around midnight, I watched a large garbage can blow down the street and never hit the ground.

About 1:00 am, the exterior wall of the TV station collapsed during a live broadcast of weather conditions.

A few minutes later, the electricity went out in all of Miami.

Not too long thereafter, there was a sudden dead silence. The wind had abruptly stopped and it was no longer raining.

Dominic handed me a flashlight and announced that he and I were going to check on the pool hall.

When we got outside, the entire area was flooded with knee-deep water.

I followed Dominic to the pool hall, which had about a foot of water inside. It smelled like rotting fish but everything else looked okay.

On the way back to the house, Dominic told me to hurry -- we were in the eye of the hurricane and it was about to kick in again.

I was simply a young wanderer from the far north where the lakes have loons and winter temperatures are prefixed with minus signs. I knew nothing about hurricanes or the eye that came with it.

Dominic also told me to watch out for snakes -- another news flash that got my attention.

It's amazing how quickly you can move when you're knee deep in snake-filled water in the dark, in the eerily silent eye of a moving hurricane.

We made it back inside the house just as Hurricane Cleo hit again with full force.

The closer to the eye, the stronger the winds. And we were on the very edge of the eye just then, with the fierce wind now blowing in the opposite direction as before.

While everyone else eventually went to sleep, I spent the rest of the night waiting for the roof to cave in.

Hurricane Cleo (category-four) caused $125 million in damage in the Miami metropolitan area.

It continued along the eastern coast, mostly out at sea, until it fizzled out on September 4 east of Newfoundland.

Only three disturbances to reach landfall as a category-five hurricane, the most intense category, have ever been recorded in the USA.

  • 1935 – Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys
  • 1969 – Hurricane Camille in Mississippi
  • 1992 – Hurricane Andrew in Dade County, Florida

Other category-five disturbances recorded in recent history include the Japanese tsunami of 2011 and Charlie Sheen, but that’s another story.
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Quote for the Day – "Perfect weather for today's game -- not a breath of air." Curt Gowdy
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Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a couple of dogs and an imaginary girlfriend named Tequila Mockingbird.
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Friday, September 15, 2017

The Summer of Love



This year, 2017, is the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love.

In January of 1967, a "Be-In" took place in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

"If you're going to San Francisco,...
be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...
If you're going to San Francisco,...
summertime will be a love-in there."
(Song lyrics by The Mamas and The Papas in May of 1967)

A counterculture of long-haired rebellious youth, called hippies, was emerging in the Haight-Ashbury district and the news media loved it. During spring break, college students began pouring into the San Francisco Bay Area.

Soon, an estimated 100,000 young people from around the world had flocked to the scene to frolic in a spontaneous free-for-all.

On June 1, 1967, four mop-haired lads from Liverpool, England, who called themselves The Beatles, released their latest album, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

It became a certified Gold album on the first day of its release -- it was also the unofficial start of what was about to become the Summer of Love.

"All you need is love." John Lennon

On June 16, a three-day International Pop Music Festival opened in Monterey, south of San Francisco. It was the world's first major rock festival. Over 200,000 people attended the event. Some of the 32 performers and groups included:

  • Janis Joplin
  • Jimi Hendrix
  • The Mamas and the Papas
  • Canned Heat
  • The Grateful Dead
  • Jefferson Airplane
  • Otis Redding
  • Lou Rawls
  • Simon and Garfunkel
  • Johnny Rivers
  • Buffalo Springfield
  • Quicksilver Messenger Service
  • Paul Butterfield Blues Band
  • Country Joe and the Fish
  • Moby Grape
  • Booker T and the MGs
  • The Byrds
  • The Who
  • The Association
  • Eric Burton and the Animals
  • others

And if you don't know who most of those folks are, I pity you. There's some great music in this crowd.

Elsewhere in the world, it was anything but a summer of love that year. During the summer of 1967, the Vietnam Conflict was going strong.

I was in a U.S. Army uniform in Atlanta at the time, doing my best to maintain my sanity as a draftee until I could become a civilian once again.

On June 5, The Six-Day War erupted.

Israel, fearing an imminent attack, struck Egyptian military targets. Jordan, Syria and Iraq soon entered the conflict. Israel annexed Arab East Jerusalem, captured the Golan Heights (from Syria), the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (from Jordan) and the Sinai (from Egypt).

It ended in six days.

In the middle of the Six Day War, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy ship stationed in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 34 and wounding 171 crewmen. Apparently, Israel mistook it for an Egyptian vessel.

Commander William L. McGonagle was awarded the Medal of Honor for remaining on the bridge and keeping the ship afloat for 17 hours despite multiple wounds.

Israel apologized and paid $12 million in compensation.

On July 6, the Biafran War erupted in eastern Nigeria in Africa. It stemmed from rebellion against ethnic cleansing (mass murder) by government forces and would last more than two years, claiming some 600,000 lives.

Race riots were a popular sport that summer.

  • June 2 -- Boston, Mass.
  • June 11 -- Tampa, Fla.
  • June 27 -- Buffalo, NY (14 shot, 200 arrested)
  • July 12 -- Newark, NJ (27 killed, 1,500 injured)
  • July 17 -- Cairo, Ill.
  • July 19 -- Durham, NC
  • July 20 -- Memphis, Tenn.
  • July 23 -- Detroit, Mich. (40 dead, 2,000 injured)
  • July 24 -- Cambridge, Md.
  • July 30 -- Milwaukee, Wis. (4 killed).

On July 29, 134 servicemen were killed on the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam.

On July 30, Gen. William Westmoreland declared we were winning in Vietnam but needed more troops.

On August 3, President Lyndon Johnson authorized 45,000 more troops to be sent to Vietnam.

The hippies in San Francisco weren't particularly concerned with problems elsewhere. It was their summer of love.

But the fun soon ended. Overcrowding, crime, homelessness and drug problems overwhelmed the quickly deteriorating Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Most of the students returned home to resume college studies.

On October 7, those remaining in the Bay Area held a mock "Death to the Hippie" funeral.

The Summer of Love was over.

For me, the Summer of Love was in 1968. I became a civilian again and kissed the ground when I got home.

Several years later, I spent a few weeks roaming around San Francisco -- fabulous city.

I even caught Janis Joplin playing a gig in a church basement during some sort of fund raising event. She sent enough electricity through the place to light the Fisherman's Warf and the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz." Janis Joplin

But my inclination for a reclusive lifestyle eventually sent me back on the road.

Love is the only sane answer to human existence -- it's not so much gazing into each other's eyes, but looking together in the same direction.

It's the art of persistence and endless forgiveness. To find someone who will love you for no reason is the ultimate bliss. It's when the happiness of another becomes essential to your own happiness.

I have plenty of love these days -- I have three wonderful dogs and a couple of imaginary girlfriends, named Tequila Mockingbird and Trixie "Boom Boom" O'Toole, who are always there when needed.
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Quote for the Day – "To fear love is to fear life." Bertrand Russell
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Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains, in the Land of Ark, where all the beautiful people live and time stands still.
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