The house behind the flat roofed building was our house...the flat roofed building was the amusement park and to its right was the merry go round where the hobby horses came from...
I was all of seven & still enjoyed going to school and all that fun stuff. That morning was a Wednesday and a terrible morning to go to school as my mom looked out our front living room window and saw the streets covered in water. In fact a row boat was making its way down Landis Ave, the main street on our little island paradise. She said I was not to go to school that day & I was bummed, but found more fun things to do in watching the ocean breaking over the boardwalk from our third floor porch.
Sections of the boardwalk were as well floating down 44th street, the street we lived on, as were parts of other homes passing by our house. Our ground floor neighbors moved up with us and we had us a big old “hurricane” party, though this was not necessarily a hurricane, more of a big, perfect storm, high tides, full moon, and a rip, roarin’ three day nor’easter.
The beach that I played on year around was non-existent covered in great waves & foam that pounded the ocean front homes and businesses. The amusement park that was between our house and the boardwalk had been torn out and sucked out to sea, though many old hobby horses were floating all about. During that first night I watched the house across the street, one without any ocean protection, shiver and shake as the ocean ran underneath. It had a crack from the ground up to the roof and we eventually watched it split in half. One minute it was there, the next a big wave came in and took it away out to sea; only thing left was an open lot. With that I started screaming and crying thinking, the same thing would happen to our house.
I was put to bed after that nightmarish sight and slept through the night’s winds, and heavy rains. I awoke the next morning and as most kids are quite used to doing, I jumped out of bed without hardly opening my eyes and hit the wall square in my face. Of course that brought on more crying and finding out that my bed was on the opposite side of the bedroom. It seems that the ocean took out the bottom front corner of our house making it lean on an odd angle, allowing my bed to change positions. That was the beginning of our last day in that house till months later when we returned.
That day we packed up and left the old house and moved back a block to a neighbor’s house where many beach block residents had taken shelter till the government could get us off our island. We lived there with our dog, Rags, and our downstairs neighbor’s dog, Jippy & several other dogs, cats, birds and other assorted beasts. That was Friday that we moved and on Saturday we were taken to a field while the tide was out and there we boarded big old helicopters that the National Guard brought in to take the women & children off our island. Now that was a fun trip, in a helicopter, at seven years old, seeing from the air the devastation of our little town. We were landed off shore on the mainland and picked up by family that took us to their home far away from the ocean, Mom & I going to Philadelphia to stay with her brother.
Such an adventure the whole experience was for me, that I will never, ever forget it.
What an interesting story. It must have been extremely hard for everyone who endured the hardships. It's amazing how people survive and make do when they are faced with adversity.....M
Although the result was quite tragic, I'm glad you wrote this story to tell us what it's like firsthand from a seven-year-old's viewpoint of the damage of your home and evacuation from an island in a devastating storm.
Living far inland and not near a river, the only similar adventure that my brother and I experienced was being snowbound for four days while we ran out of basic food. The snow melted quickly and there was no damage to the houses. As much as we feared tornadoes, only my mother experienced one in her childhood.
Coincidentally, we had a rat terrier named Rags when we were children. We accidentally left him locked in the house on a two-week vacation. Somehow he survived without water and ate the curtains. One tough little doggie.
You and your family were part and parcel of that horrific storm. I'm glad you eventually were able to return to your home months later. In retrospect, your house could have been claimed by the ocean.
Sounds like you were lucky to get out of that alive, The way you described it, Ed, it was a lot like the hurricanes we get down here. Again, I think you are lucky to have survived that horrendous storm, or whatever it was.
Sepsis knocked her down and out. Faith, hope, and gave her the strength to get back on her feet. I am a Runner She fought the river of death They said she'd never run again
She proved them wrong...
Sepsis knocked her down and out. Faith, hope, and gave her the strength to get back on her feet. I am a Runner She fought the river of death They said she'd never run again
She proved them wrong...
I was all of seven & still enjoyed going to school and all that fun stuff. That morning was a Wednesday and a terrible morning to go to school as my mom looked out our front living room window and saw the streets covered in water. In fact a row boat was making its way down Landis Ave, the main street on our little island paradise. She said I was not to go to school that day & I was bummed, but found more fun things to do in watching the ocean breaking over the boardwalk from our third floor porch.
