Hurricane Donna defined hurricanes for me on September 10, 1960 at about 8 pm. That was when the first gale force winds began pounding the house my father built on the Quarter Circle A Ranch seven miles east of Parrish, FL. Although a scary night unfolded, my nine-yer-old mind experienced a thunder-booming, wind-howling, lightning-filled adventure.

      Hurricane Gladys in 1968 further informed my concept and response to tropical storms, which I captured in a short story that was published in The Gabber on October 18, 2023 and is a chapter in Growing Up Floridian, the memoir I self-published in 2016.

      The adventurous notion of tropical storms ended for me last year with the back-to-back pounding of Pinellas County by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The damage they wrought brought about an eviction from Seaside Villas in Gulfport of my wife and me. Although we resided in a second floor apartment and only lost my wife’s vehicle to the storms, we were forced to find a new abode after a few weeks of searching on DuPont Street in Gulfport.

“Hurricane Mind”

The hurricane mind, created by following storm tracks across the gulf, 

responds to the pressure outflow with a diversity of mental construction.

The paths instruct the emotional confluence to recall storms of yesterday and

yesteryear and recount historical trajectories that offered little real destruction…

https://thegabber.com/gulfport-rising-a-community-memoir/

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