48th anniversary of Betsy

Thanks for sharing. Where did you live?

It was the best of times and yet, yea, it was the best of times

Well, I was in either 4th or 5th grade. While Betsy was not my 1st storm, it was the 1st one that I remember being so  exciting. I remember the preperations and the hub bub going on in the house the day of the storm.  Of course back then, you didn't evacuate out of town, you went to a school or such.  My parents had moved to River Ridge back in 55, 3 days before I was born.  They moved there because it was the highest land they could find. They had been flooded in the 47 storm and had 30+ inches of water in the house for about 3 months, located on Severn and St. Rene.

Back then, River Ridge was New Orleans 23 and was still mostly woods, chicken farms and a few houses. We lived on Citrus Road. It was a dead end "shell" road back then. I do remember the flaps for the attic fan opening and slamming closed until dad went into the attic and fixed them in the open position.  I also remember sitting around the table listening to the transistor radio listening to the reports from all over the area by the light of the hurricane lamp.   We had heard several reports from Grand Isle....maybe the police / fire dept ?   and on the last report from them there was a very bizarre sound as they were blown off the air in the middle of the report.


At some point I remember us all following dad into the den to look at the back windows when he herded us back to the dining room because 2 trees had fallen on the roof.  ( those damn Hackberrys ) The wind had been so loud that we didn't hear the trees crash on the house. While I'm pretty sure the eye passed way to the West, there was a lull when my father went out to help the neighbor do something to their roof that was blowing off.  The number of trees falling sounded like New Years eve with a bunch of people with M-80 and cherry bombs.

The next morning, you could hardly see the street because of all the trees down.  The radio reports were not much since communications were limited.   Most info was word of mouth from neighbors.  The 1st day or so was dedicated to trying to take some of the weight off the roof from the trees and eliminating any danger on the block.

My parents had "the" gas stove on the block so all the women were using our kitchen to cook. By the 2nd day the neighbors moved picnic tables/chairs/ lamps/ torches  to our front yard for the nightly "get togeathers".  There was no way to drive because o the trees down so people would walk when they got bored.  Word came back about Jefferson Highway being covered by the roof of Hazel Park school that had been taken off by a tornado and about ships and barges being up on the batture..........HOLY COW ! dad, cand we go ? please PLEASE ?

Long story short, there were over 30 ships and over 250 barges that had broken loose and were pushed upriver from their moorings. Some from Avondale were pushed up the river well into St. Charles parish.   We were out of school for 5 weeks, out of electricy for 3+ weeks, but it was the best time of my life....well until Katrina.  The sense of togetherness in the neighborhood was  fantastic.  Everyone worked together as one for everyones benifit.  As the freezers thawed we all ate like kings before tuna fish and crackers. Fathers took turns staying up at night to watch the neighborhood.

Our "luck" was that the street behind us got power back after about a week and we were able to run an extension cord over the back fence to plug in the ice box  so that when the store opened, we cold get things that needed to be cold.  The  grocery had emermency "hand cranks" for the registers ( like a kid today would know what those were ).  Betsy led me to my first job as a "helper" at the local hardware store.  When Mr Phillips had been able to get there he was by himself. Since dad always took me there I knew where most of the things were.  He didn't have cash on hand so you gave people what they needed and  wrote their name and how much they owed on a tablet to be paid later.

Until Katrina, Betsy was for me, the standard bearer for how people SHOULD act in a neighborhood..   As I stood in a friends backyard during Katrina in River Ridge talking with my brother in Houston, he said, " well, I guess you're happy with your birthday present?".    As Agnes the wonder dog and I stood in the wind and rain with a Salem Light in my mouth and a matrini in the hand that wasn't holding the phone................Jim, this is as good as it gets without being a kid  during Betsy".

Great story, Gully!

Betsy was the second storm I went through - Hurricane Hilda affected the area the previous October and I was excited about getting a day off from school and having the power going off for a few hours. Hah!

On September 9 we got the word at my Gentilly school that were going home early. We in my third grade class stacked the textbooks on the shelves and moved the desks to the center of the room (the classrooms were surrounded by glass). We took all workbooks, pens/pencils, etc., home.

Oh it was so exciting - until I saw the alert on the TV that our area needed to evacuate in case the London Avenue Canal gave way. Right after that, the power went off. I was scared to death. It was too windy to leave, so we went to the second floor and rode it out. We listened on the radio as one by one, the stations lost power. I remember the whistling wind and the periodic "BOOM". The booms were from all the oak trees that went down.

At daylight I finally got the nerve to go downstairs and go outside. No flooding, but huge trees and power lines down everywhere. By some miracle, all of the trees fell away from the houses (as opposed to what I saw from Katrina in Pearl River County and Washington Parish, where trees fell on houses and chopped them in half).

Some "shock and awe" - one oak tree was uprooted and ended up 100 plus feet away, across the street. Wow!

We were without electricity for some time. Our poor neighbors across the street had boasted earlier about having an "all-electric" house - not very practical. Their refrigerator was some newfangled model that operated electronically - when the electricity went out, they were unable to open it!

I must say that the night of September 9 was the scariest time of my life, until Katrina topped it.

Elizabeth

I was born in 1952 and I remember the many storms we went through. When I was very young, my grandfather lived in a house directly across from the Schriever Train Depot. The whole family went there for the weekend at least once every month, for all holidays, and every hurricane. The house was old and the family did not feel safe because it would shake and creak and the tin roof would rattle in every storm. My grandfather ran the depot at night and was also the station telegraph (morse code)operator. So, they hung kerosene lanterns in a cleaned-out boxcar, put in army cots and rollaway beds. Set up card tables and chairs, made a cauldron of gumbo, iced down a lot of Falstaff and Cokes and had the neighbors over for a hurricane card playing party. The kids played Battle and the adults played Poker and Bourre. It seems the storms always hit after dark. Luckily, no damage ever occured in the neighborhood. However, there were always twisters out there that tore roofs away somewhere. In 1957 we built a new home in Bucktown off of Bonnabel Blvd., leaving our old home off of Monticello Ave. near the river at the Orleans/Jefferson line.
The first hurricane of note there was Hilda. It was my first daytime storm, and I was looking out of our front window facing west as a tornado
came down at Causeway and Vetterans Blvd, picked up the Esso(now Exxon)Service Station man from the pump island and tossed him through the stations plate glass window, uninjured. It continued north up Causeway Blvd which was mostly vacant property then, with clam shells in the streets and no cement or blacktop.
I remember Betsy, well. I was in the 8th grade. I had gone to St. Paul's as a new boarding student with the Christian Brothers. I was on the 3rd floor of Benilde Hall in the big open-floor dormitory and had been there for just two weeks when Betsy hit. That night the wind screamed and roared in Covington all night as I had never heard wind before. Through the night we could hear the roaring twisters passing over and knocking down and turning giant nearly 150 ft tall ancient long-leaf pines with their foot long needles and cones into 6 ft segments lying broken on the ground. The noise when those 3 ft wide trunks popped and hit the ground was like an explosion. They were all over the campus, but none survived Betsy. It took a month to clean up the mess. Luckily, only one tree came down on a building; the Brother's house, and nobody was injured. My folks back in Metairie had no electricity for two weeks. They were cooking on grand mamere's heirloom civil war era heavy iron pots they used in the fireplace in the old days. They put barbecue charcoal under the Dutch oven iron pots which had 2&1/2 inch legs on the bottom. My mom grew up cooking in the big fireplace in the 1920's when they had neither gas nor electricity, and a big cistern for water out on Bayou LaFourche and Bayou Terreborne. That rainwater was so good to drink, except when the frogs got in one time, and we had to watch out for tadpoles from the tap. I miss being able to go into the field next door in Shriever, and cutting down a cane to chew like candy; it was delicious. But, I digress...

Marsh, I was born on Monticello St. in 1957. Interesting.