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Elijah and I woke up that morning to a beautiful ice castle world where everything was covered. I was hearing this cracking noises but I had no idea what they were. Chip was working nights, 7p to 7a. By the time he arrived home we had no electricity. He came in the house and said, "Pack up everything you and the baby need. We're getting out of here while we still can." We lived in a neighborhood with a lot of huge, old-growth trees (mostly oaks) and the branches were falling under the weight of the ice, taking power lines down with them and blocking off roads.
Chip had a friend who was the manager of a hotel in town. He called his friend and had him hold a room for us. We had no other choice with a baby — we had no fireplace for heat and Elijah was still drinking heated formula. We escaped our neighborhood, slipping and sliding on the icy roads. By the time we arrived at the hotel, there was a crush of people at the front desk — travelers mostly who had checked out, found the flights canceled and were trying in vain to get their room back.
For NINE DAYS or electricity stayed out and we lived in the hotel. It was the ice storm of the century, and the people of Memphis have not forgotten those trying days.
That's why every time there's a winter storm warning, like yesterday, Memphians descend upon the grocery stores as if the apocalypse is coming. No one wants to get stranded like that ever again. I'm not sure where they're planning to keep the milk if in fact the electricity goes out. Outside in the ice, I guess.
1 comments:
I remember clearly that ice storm of 1994. I was living in Texas then but had come back to my hometown of Iuka, Mississippi (about 90 minutes east of Memphis) to visit my grandmother.
My grandmother liked to sleep in the living room of her house because it had the biggest window for her to look out. So I slept on the other sofa in the living room while I was there. The ice storm moved in during the night and my grandmother's beloved police scanner kept getting busier. (My grandmother and her sisters and their police scanners would make great fodder for a future blog post by me!)
We awoke fully in the morning to a winter wonderland of ice and falling trees. I stood on the back porch and listened to what sounded like gunshots in the woods as trees and limbs broke off from the weight of the ice. I ended up staying more than a week with my grandmother to help her out since she had no electricity. But she did have propane so we were warm and could cook. So we cooked and ate and shared with neighbors all of the contents of my grandmother's freezer.
That was the last time I saw my grandmother. She died in July 1994. So the ice storm of that year is extra special to me because it was the last bit of time I got to spend with one of the people I loved most in this world.
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