With the pending hurricane, I had the wife and the kids move up to Mom’s home in northern, TX to ride out the storm. The university President cancelled classes Thursday afternoon until they were to restart on the following Tuesday. However, the university would “remain open” and he required all administration and staff to remain on the job throughout the whole period. As an administrator I had to remain here to step in for my boss who was stuck out of town due to the closure of the Houston airport. The hurricane hit on Saturday afternoon, with the eye of the storm passing just 30 miles to the east. Electricity went out for most people in the area early Saturday morning. Water and phone service remained available for most homes within the city throughout the storm, but those living out in the country had neither. Power has since been restored to most businesses in town and to the university as well, but half the residential neighborhoods in town and most of the country residents remain without any power (including the Stroup household).

Standing in for the boss can be fairly interesting. I was called by the University President at 5:00am Friday morning. He asked me to attend an “emergency” meeting at 6:00am at the university. There the college Deans and various university administrators discussed how to coordinate notifying the remainder of the university administration and staff that they could turn around and go home once they came to work at 8:00am that morning. For some reason, the fact that this decision process could have taken place before the close of business Thursday afternoon, after classes had already been cancelled and before all these people went home for the day, was not discussed. (You gotta love bureaucracy.)

But one learns some interesting things going through a scenario like this. Every time you enter a dark room you turn on the light switch despite knowing full well that there is no power—sometimes you do this twice within a matter of fifteen seconds. Sometimes you even find yourself looking for those little nightlights to plug in the hallway to help you see, only to realize that, just like the light bulbs in the ceiling, they require power, too. Then you’re glad that nobody is with you to make fun of your stupidity. Also, the entire (slightly smelly) contents of a medium sized chest freezer can be placed comfortably into three large plastic garbage bags, making convenient hauling it all to the city dump. I was one of many people there, all holding black trash bags and tossing them into a pile and smelling the pungent aroma.

Cleaning up the storm debris from the yard allows you to notice that half the town seems to be burning scarce gasoline by driving around neighborhoods in some gruesome spectator sport. They slow down and gawk, mouth fully agape and finger pointing, at the neighbor’s 50 foot tall oak tree that unfortunately has bisected her roof. You feel like putting up traffic cones and charging a dollar per vehicle for admission. Also, you learn to entertain yourself when it is only 7:00pm at night and there is no television, no light to read books by, and only two radio stations remain on the air to listen to on your transistor radio. Unfortunately, one is a rap station and the other one country. You can’t make out what the rappers are saying so you pick country one, only to wonder just how many songs can be written about having yet another beer to try to forget about the fact that you’re such an dolt that your lady’s been cheatin’ on ya with your “best friend”? It makes you wonder just how much of a dolt you’ve been yourself lately. Then the guilty feelings make you turn off the radio, preferring the silence to the introspection.

But it all could have been worse. Our house was spared any damage, as our only fallen tree out in the back yard had landed perfectly in a spot that did not hurt any structure or any other trees. Merely a foot to the right or left would have damaged something. A couple of good friends came over with a chain saw and we three made quick work of cleaning it up. Of course sharing an obligatory cold beer followed all the hard work (yes, I had a small stash sitting on ice in the cooler—for morale purposes, of course). And unlike many of my friends, at least I had no “refugees” to house that had come up from the Houston area. I really feel for those poor folks from the Houston-Galveston-Beaumont areas on the Texas coast. They all spent 24 to 36 hours driving northward only a hundred miles on super-congested highways in the 95 degree weather with the A/C turned off to save precious gasoline (which was nowhere to be found along the way). They were trying to escape the potential of having to endure high winds, extended power outages and heavy rains on the coast, only to arrive in Nacogdoches exhausted and cranky, to sleep on the hard floors with dozens of their extended (and, let’s face it, usually “extended” for good reason) relatives, where they experienced heavy winds, extended power outages and heavy rains. Of course, when they had enough of all that, they then tried to return home on the same super-congested highways with the same shortage of gasoline in the same heat without A/C, trying to return to neighborhoods that the police may or may not yet deem to be open for the public.

Yup, every time I get hot, tired and frustrated I think about their ordeal and I tell myself, “It could always be worse.”

I still complain, though… and I think you would, too.