Stormy Weather
Aug. 21st, 2008 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get."
- Mark Twain
Right now I am sitting in front of the computer in what amounts to my pajamas: A soft and worn out tee shirt and the blousy gray athletic shorts that show just enough thigh to be considered marginally indecent.
I have a number of soft and worn out tee shirts that I use for this purpose, shirts that are, for reasons of condition or propriety, unfit for public attire. but the one I'm currently wearing is dangerously soft and worn to the point of being worn-out; the once-heathery gray is tinged yellow like an aged newspaper and the collar has split so that every time I put the shirt on, it catches on my left ear.
Normally I would have transferred this shirt from the sleepwear rotation to the box of spare rags. But this shirt posesses strong sentimental value. It was my prize for surviving a tornado.
The summer of 1995 was the interregnum between high school and college, a dizzy sprint toward adulthood punctuated by graduation parties and loose ends. By mid-July, my best friends and I had less than a month before we all scattered to various campuses across the country. Meanwhile, my high school sweetheart and I were thoroughly enjoying the intoxicating denial of our relationship's denouement.
As a sort of collective going-away present, my friend's girlfriend (and therefore nominally my friend) Sara invited a group of us to her family cottage in Star Lake, a small town located on the western ridge of the
Adirondack mountains in waaay upstate New York, located halfway between The Middle of Nowhere and Hell-and-Gone.
There were ten of us there for an extended weekend -- three couples, one single guy and the two women who loved him, all chaperoned by Sara's mother. The trip, as it was originally constituted, was not what I would typically describe as a good time: canoeing, freshwater swimming, hiking up mountains. But I somehow managed to have a good time anyway.
The photo above reveals just one of the picturesque vistas we encountered while on one of these midsummer death hikes. What you cannot see in the photograph are the millions of teeny tiny little bugs that swarmed me -- and only me -- on our trek up the mountain, perhaps drawn to my faint and high-pitched wheezing.
It was a great time, actually. After all, I was with my girlfriend and some of my best friends and there was the perpetual entertainment value inherent in observing the social dynamics of horny teenagers, real low comedy. We even had some high-school quality drama during the trip, and I was lucky enough not to be directly involved in any of it.
We had lovely weather for the first few days, warm but breezy. That is, until the early morning of July 15. We had been snug our beds -- guys on the second floor, girls on the first -- for a few hours when it started raining. Then it started raining hard. After a while I couldn't hear the rain anymore, because of the constant thunder. And I don't mean a rumble every thirty seconds or so, I mean constant, uninterrupted thunder for minutes at a time. My bed was right under the second-floor window and all I could see were lightning flashes, almost like a strobe light.
I didn't even hear the wind, although it must have been wailing. We were obviously in the middle of some extreme weather, like nothing I had experienced before. When an especially percussive burst of thunder and lightning seemed to awaken the entire house, we guys ventured downstairs -- either to demonstrate our strength and courage for the women or to seek their comfort, I'm not sure which.
When we woke up the next morning (though I can't actually remember if we ever got to sleep) the town was in ruins. There were trees downed everywhere. Power lines were shredded. Some houses and buildings had giant holes in them.
It was what they call a "Microburst", a very localized column of sinking air, producing damaging divergent and straight-line winds at the surface that are similar to but distinguishable from tornadoes which generally have convergent damage.
As for Sara's cottage, an enormous tree had practically fallen through the second-floor window -- right where I had been sleeping -- and rolled off the house onto Sara's mother's Chevy Suburban, nearly splitting it in two. I remember vividly that at least one half of the vehicle was at a 45-degree angle. Call it a "microburst" if you want to, but that shit was the work of a fucking tornado.
The rest of that trip is a fuzzy, sleepwalking memory: there was lots of clean-up and other chores; taking occasional breaks to survey other people's wreckage and interminable wait times for a turn with GameBoy Tetris, which was the only semi-peaceful and moderately gratifying entertainment option left in the entire town. Also, as time went by, the weird love triangle between the single guy and the two women who loved him became less cute and more corrosive.
By the time someone's father came to pick us up, there had been serious, Yalta-esque negotiations about who would ride with whom, and who was going to get which friends in the impending divorce. It was an icy ride home. But I can laugh about it now. Actually, I was laughing about it a week later. I loved all that silly, neo-Shakespearean high school drama. I still miss it a little bit. And this one weekend vacation had it all.
If my youth was a television series, the Star Lake Tornado was my sweeps-week season finale. Which is why I've always kept the souvenir tee-shirt that Sara sold to me for five bucks. It reads:
----------------------------------------------------
Microburst Invasion '95
The Changing of the Adirondacks
July 15, 1995
Homes, cars and acres of land devestated.
One small hamlet changed forever,
Except for the strong will and spirit of the people.
Star Lake, New York
Parkside Grocery
Oswegatchie, N.Y.
----------------------------------------------------
How can I throw away such a shirt -- a shirt so steeped in personal history?
Now that I really think about it, all of the crappy old tee shirts I wear to bed -- like the complimentary tee shirt from work commemorating the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001; or the my first Race for the Cure tee-shirt for which I raised $150 and ran the race with walking pneumonia; or the blatantly mysoginistic Las Vegas Bally's Sports Book tee shirt that came free with a $20 parlay card -- all have memorable stories behind them. They're much more interesting than the plain-old square shirts I wear outside of the home. But they probably don't smell as nice.
- Mark Twain
Right now I am sitting in front of the computer in what amounts to my pajamas: A soft and worn out tee shirt and the blousy gray athletic shorts that show just enough thigh to be considered marginally indecent.
I have a number of soft and worn out tee shirts that I use for this purpose, shirts that are, for reasons of condition or propriety, unfit for public attire. but the one I'm currently wearing is dangerously soft and worn to the point of being worn-out; the once-heathery gray is tinged yellow like an aged newspaper and the collar has split so that every time I put the shirt on, it catches on my left ear.
Normally I would have transferred this shirt from the sleepwear rotation to the box of spare rags. But this shirt posesses strong sentimental value. It was my prize for surviving a tornado.
The summer of 1995 was the interregnum between high school and college, a dizzy sprint toward adulthood punctuated by graduation parties and loose ends. By mid-July, my best friends and I had less than a month before we all scattered to various campuses across the country. Meanwhile, my high school sweetheart and I were thoroughly enjoying the intoxicating denial of our relationship's denouement.
As a sort of collective going-away present, my friend's girlfriend (and therefore nominally my friend) Sara invited a group of us to her family cottage in Star Lake, a small town located on the western ridge of the
Adirondack mountains in waaay upstate New York, located halfway between The Middle of Nowhere and Hell-and-Gone.
There were ten of us there for an extended weekend -- three couples, one single guy and the two women who loved him, all chaperoned by Sara's mother. The trip, as it was originally constituted, was not what I would typically describe as a good time: canoeing, freshwater swimming, hiking up mountains. But I somehow managed to have a good time anyway.
The photo above reveals just one of the picturesque vistas we encountered while on one of these midsummer death hikes. What you cannot see in the photograph are the millions of teeny tiny little bugs that swarmed me -- and only me -- on our trek up the mountain, perhaps drawn to my faint and high-pitched wheezing.
It was a great time, actually. After all, I was with my girlfriend and some of my best friends and there was the perpetual entertainment value inherent in observing the social dynamics of horny teenagers, real low comedy. We even had some high-school quality drama during the trip, and I was lucky enough not to be directly involved in any of it.
We had lovely weather for the first few days, warm but breezy. That is, until the early morning of July 15. We had been snug our beds -- guys on the second floor, girls on the first -- for a few hours when it started raining. Then it started raining hard. After a while I couldn't hear the rain anymore, because of the constant thunder. And I don't mean a rumble every thirty seconds or so, I mean constant, uninterrupted thunder for minutes at a time. My bed was right under the second-floor window and all I could see were lightning flashes, almost like a strobe light.
I didn't even hear the wind, although it must have been wailing. We were obviously in the middle of some extreme weather, like nothing I had experienced before. When an especially percussive burst of thunder and lightning seemed to awaken the entire house, we guys ventured downstairs -- either to demonstrate our strength and courage for the women or to seek their comfort, I'm not sure which.
When we woke up the next morning (though I can't actually remember if we ever got to sleep) the town was in ruins. There were trees downed everywhere. Power lines were shredded. Some houses and buildings had giant holes in them.
It was what they call a "Microburst", a very localized column of sinking air, producing damaging divergent and straight-line winds at the surface that are similar to but distinguishable from tornadoes which generally have convergent damage.
As for Sara's cottage, an enormous tree had practically fallen through the second-floor window -- right where I had been sleeping -- and rolled off the house onto Sara's mother's Chevy Suburban, nearly splitting it in two. I remember vividly that at least one half of the vehicle was at a 45-degree angle. Call it a "microburst" if you want to, but that shit was the work of a fucking tornado.
The rest of that trip is a fuzzy, sleepwalking memory: there was lots of clean-up and other chores; taking occasional breaks to survey other people's wreckage and interminable wait times for a turn with GameBoy Tetris, which was the only semi-peaceful and moderately gratifying entertainment option left in the entire town. Also, as time went by, the weird love triangle between the single guy and the two women who loved him became less cute and more corrosive.
By the time someone's father came to pick us up, there had been serious, Yalta-esque negotiations about who would ride with whom, and who was going to get which friends in the impending divorce. It was an icy ride home. But I can laugh about it now. Actually, I was laughing about it a week later. I loved all that silly, neo-Shakespearean high school drama. I still miss it a little bit. And this one weekend vacation had it all.
If my youth was a television series, the Star Lake Tornado was my sweeps-week season finale. Which is why I've always kept the souvenir tee-shirt that Sara sold to me for five bucks. It reads:
----------------------------------------------------
Microburst Invasion '95
The Changing of the Adirondacks
July 15, 1995
Homes, cars and acres of land devestated.
One small hamlet changed forever,
Except for the strong will and spirit of the people.
Star Lake, New York
Parkside Grocery
Oswegatchie, N.Y.
----------------------------------------------------
How can I throw away such a shirt -- a shirt so steeped in personal history?
Now that I really think about it, all of the crappy old tee shirts I wear to bed -- like the complimentary tee shirt from work commemorating the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001; or the my first Race for the Cure tee-shirt for which I raised $150 and ran the race with walking pneumonia; or the blatantly mysoginistic Las Vegas Bally's Sports Book tee shirt that came free with a $20 parlay card -- all have memorable stories behind them. They're much more interesting than the plain-old square shirts I wear outside of the home. But they probably don't smell as nice.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 12:59 pm (UTC)"nominally my friend"- that hurts Jason.
The Lakeview still stands and one week from today I will make my annual trek to close it up for the season. It is the only place that I would call home. While the collected memories I have from my trips up there are uncountable, that few days does stand out. For me, it was not the "neo-Shakespearean" drama. It was the look on my mothers face, as something so familiar as the back of her hand (the town of Star Lake), became unrecognizable.
I have been wrong about a lot of things thus far in life and high school was a particularly low point of wrongs. There was no out doors man buried deep in Jason Hammersla but I'm glad you still have that tee shirt.
No way
Date: 2008-08-22 01:53 pm (UTC)And I certainly didn't mean to imply that the "neo-Shakespearean drama" was the only memorable aspect of that trip. In many ways it was a "last hurrah" for me and some of my closest pals -- as precious as those friendships were and still remain, I'm not sure we've been as close since. And I have you to thank for making that happen.
I am glad to hear that the Lakeview -- and Sara herself, if that is really you -- still stands.
Yes Way
Date: 2008-08-22 05:05 pm (UTC)I have been visiting your blog once in a while for years, probably since you started it. I found it a long time ago by accident and hearing the way you talk reminds me of the cast of characters from high school. As far as I can tell, you haven't changed a bit. So, no, I don't hate you. For what it is worth, I think you are great writer and I'm surprised you haven't been writing a column.
There have been more than this one anonymous comment that have come from me. I have seen pictures that I took but up to now I haven't been mentioned by name. I don't think it is a secret that I idolized the group that were all at least 1 year older than I was and when you all went off to college and understandably shed your past I felt left behind. Seemed pointless to stay in touch, what with the distance between and since my connection to you and others in the group was severed but I have a nostalgic heart and I check up on people, which obviously includes you, from time to time. (also my mother can't help but tell me who she ran into at wegmans.....arggg)
So, why did I come forward now? Well, two reasons really. #1- Just checking to see if you really read the comments. #2- That was an amazing trip. I still have the video!!
Now that I have reached out, will we stay in touch? It's probably not realistic to think so, but now I can say: "Watch out! You never know who may be reading!!" HA!!
Maybe we'll run in to each other or maybe this is the start of a new friendship. Either way, I'm glad to see you are doing so well and you are still so philosophical.
Sara
Re: Yes Way
Date: 2008-08-25 12:31 am (UTC)