Some good news more or less from one of my fav authors

http://rwwhite.com/ --- news from his site....



Where I live: an old Cracker house built on short stilts, on a Calusa Indian mound, on an acre of old tropical growth over-looking the bay.

Randy Wayne White



HURRICANE CHARLEY ... Randy's view ...

I'll post before and after photos tomorrow, if this DSL continues to work. Can't believe it does. Phone, water, electric out, roads all closed. Because of my generator, I must be the only lights for miles. -Randy
Randy, 8/14/2004 1:12:40 AM

-------------------
----------------------

Hey guys, Thanks for thinking of me. It's a little after 1 a.m., the generator is going, and I can see stars through a section of my office roof. What a day. At around 4 p.m., the eye of Hurricane Charlie passed over Captiva Pass, Cabbage Key, Useppa, and my old house on the Indian mounds of Pineland.

It was the equivalent of a 30-mile wide tornado. I have no idea what the winds were. 145 mph was the last I heard. The weather station at Mote Marine next door was blown away. So were the boat houses where I sometimes write. So was the marina where my Maverick was stored for 'safe keeping.' A dumb ass move to put it there because my dock still stood after the nightmare moved on. None others in the area did. Pine island has been devastated; the houses around me in Pineland, too. It reminds me of photos of Hiroshima after the A bomb was dropped. A horizon of splintered trees and imploded buildings.

But these ancient Indian mounds on which my old house is built ... endure as they have for several thousand years. This house, built in the early '20s, also did well. It survived when much newer houses near by collapsed, and the storm surge never got near it because of the elevation.

My sons and I boarded the entire porch exterior with marine plywood; used 2.5 inch screws. Two sections blew off, so my porch interior was destroyed, all the ceilings fans, bottles of hot sauce everywhere. I lost my tin room, nearly every tree in my yard was sheared, but for a couple of ancient, dinosaur Jamaican tall coconut palms.

What really brought me near tears, though, was my office door blew open during the worst of it, and I later found my really fine stereo microscope, and my six inch Celestron telescope both ruined, in a pile of rubble on the porch. Son of a bitch! Anyway, we did very well, considering. In the overall scheme of things, Charles barely scratched our paint. Thanks so very much for your postings. What a good group you folks are. Randy
Randy White, 8/14/2004 1:09:29 AM