Living here in Iowa, we rarely make acquaintances with Hurricanes. If we get any association with a hurricane, it generally comes from those that land in Texas, get into the jet stream, and dump a lot of rain on Iowa as a tropical depression. Even then, that’s a rare occurrence as the jet stream usually grabs hold of those systems and kicks them east into Illinois and Indiana instead. Usually the greatest effect from any hurricane in Iowa is that it puts our own weather into a holding pattern for a few days.
Hurricane Patricia is in the news today. They say it’s about to hit Mexico and is currently the strongest hurricane on record in the western hemisphere. I have been reading stories about the evacuations and preparations going on in Mexico right now and one thing about the stories reminded me of my one true experience with a hurricane, Hurricane Isabel in 2003. It’s that it’s already raining ahead of the hurricane in Mexico.
I was on my way to Williamston, North Carolina in mid-September of 2003 with a load of kosher beef trimmings out of the Agri-Processors plant in Postville, Iowa. There in Williamston was a hot dog plant that made hot dogs from these trimmings. The weather was beautiful September weather when I left Iowa. I spent the night around Louisville as I always did on the first night. The next day I remember I took the southern route to Williamston which took me through Knoxville, Tennessee and across I-40 through North Carolina. This is as opposed to the northern route which took me across I-64 from Louisville through Charleston, then down through West Virginia, Virginia, and into North Carolina. I had some bad luck the previous time through Charleston with traffic that stopped abruptly in front of me and allowed my load to slip off of the pallets. Why Agri-Processors never shrink wrapped the cardboard combos to the pallets is beyond me, but that load had to be hand unloaded and they were not happy in Williamston.
As I was travelling across North Carolina, it was the evening of the second night. I had to deliver the next morning. It started raining. I was east of Greensboro, actually east of Burlington, heading for the Durham/Raleigh area where I’d catch Route 64 and head east. This area was under intense road construction at the time and I was in a construction zone, doing 55 MPH. I came over a small hill and there was a Cadillac in my lane with a flat tire. They couldn’t pull over, so they were driving about 15 MPH. I had to slam on my brakes. I had nowhere to go. The shoulder had been replaced with a cement barrier and there was very thick traffic on my left. I knew it wasn’t good. While I didn’t hit that Cadillac, I knew the load in the back probably wasn’t on the pallets anymore. I found a truck stop and went to bed for the night.
The next morning I woke up. It was cloudy. That morning, the news was that Johnny Cash and John Ritter had passed away. I’ll never forget it because John Ritter reminded me of my father. In fact, he was only born one day before Dad. I also listened to WSM out of Nashville at the time. They were on my Sirius Satellite Radio (although I don’t think they are anymore). They were playing a lot of Johnny Cash tunes. Sure enough, I got to Williamston and the load had shifted off of the pallets. The guy looked at me and told me that he wasn’t going to unload this one. He handed me a fork and told me it was my job this time.
I unloaded 40,000 pounds of beef trimmings by hand. It took me over 4 hours! All I had was a food grade pitchfork! The unloading guy would bring me a plastic tote and I would fork the meat over from the combo into his tote. I was still in relatively good health at the time. It was the last time that I recall doing that level of labor in my life. Only a year later I would start becoming pretty ill. I remember when the load was unloaded, it was afternoon. I pulled away from the dock and had to change clothes as I was soaked to the bone from sweat and I had bits of meat on me. I felt very ill as I wasn’t used to working so hard. Truthfully, I am surprised I didn’t have a heart attack. Thankfully, I had quit smoking a year earlier.
My next stop was up in Severn, North Carolina, up by the Virginia border. I had until the next morning, so I left Williamston. It was cloudy and there were rain squalls at this point, but nothing serious. I drove up Highway 17 and caught Highway 13 which took me up to Suffolk where I knew there was a small truck stop where I could spend the evening. Just north of the Highway 17 & 13 split, on the north side of Windsor, I came across this peanut place that I had passed on previous trips, but never had the time to stop. Since I had the time, I wheeled in there. The place is called Bertie County Peanuts, and they have a website online. They are a small outfit, about the size of Krob’s in my hometown of Walker, Iowa. There’s a cotton field across the road. I sat inside there and visited with the equally inquisitive employee and spent about an hour or so at the place. The guy was even nice enough to walk me across the road to show me the cotton field and explain how cotton grows, and how they pick it. I ended buying a satchel of peanuts from the guy. He told me that all the peanuts in the store taste terrible because they aren’t refrigerated. He said that peanuts have oil in them and that if you want the best tasting peanuts, you had to buy ones that have been kept cool immediately after roasting. His were kept in a cooler and I can attest that his tasted far superior to anything I’ve ever eaten from a store. I left there and got up to the little truck stop in Suffolk, Virginia
There is a television station around Suffolk called WAVE. I will never forget that as I thought of a tidal wave and felt that if a large wave ever struck the area, they’d be the aptly named station to watch regarding the event. Their news was wall to wall that evening regarding the impending hurricane, Isabelle. It was still a few days out, but was already a Category 5 storm. It was still cloudy and the radar showed bands of rain from the hurricane starting to make landfall, even though the hurricane was still a long ways out. They said that it was about to start raining, and stay raining. Before dark, the rain came and never abated during the rest of my time in that area.
I awoke the next morning and it was certainly raining. One thing about the rain out on the east coast that I noticed is that it’s not a cold of a rain the way we get here in Iowa in September. It might have been a product of a more southerly latitude, but the rain wasn’t cold. It was warm and humid, and raining like crazy. It would soak you to the bone. It created light fog conditions and it was hard keeping my windows clear. I learned a long time ago that cracking your window does more to keep your windows clear than the defroster alone does. After a quick bite to eat, I left along U.S. Route 58 heading west, then caught Virginia Route 35, and headed south through Boykins, Virginia, and down to a business called Resinall at Severn, NC, just across the border from Virginia. It was raining cats and dogs there. I backed up to the dock and waited to get loaded. After awhile, nothing was happening, so I went inside. A “gentleman” inside informed me that they could smell “something” in the trailer and saw what looked like dried blood on the floor. Indeed, there was some dried blood on the floor, but it didn’t smell that bad to me. There wasn’t much blood at all. The guy told me that they would refuse to load me unless I went somewhere to wash out. Fair enough.
Then began a long process of trying to find a place to wash out. It was decided that I was to go to Emporia, Virginia and wash my trailer out, then return to load. So, off through the rain I went to Emporia and there I had the trailer washed out. On the way back, I heard a lady honking her horn at me in Boykins. It seems my door had come unlocked and was flapping about back there. God bless her! Someone could have gotten hit by that door. I got back to Severn and they proceeded to load me. I will say this, these guys were arrogant pricks. They wouldn’t even come outside to tell me that they wouldn’t load me the first time I was there. I was supposed to “figure it out” I guess when nothing happened after an hour. They must have thought that I was supposed to sit there and watch them, so that’s what I did the second time and the jerk on the forklift kept whistling, “If I only had a brain” from the Wizard of Oz, as if I was stupid. Anyhow, they loaded me with pallets of raw pine tree resin and I went to the peanut place in town to scale myself and realized that I was too heavy on the nose of the trailer. No matter how forward I moved my tandems, I couldn’t make it work. Trust me, I stood in that bone soaking rain and tried! So, back to Resinall I went!
They were not happy that I needed the load reloaded and redistributed. This time they told me that if I needed reloaded, it would cost me. Pricks! So back to the scale I went and it was loaded really heavy on the tandems. I stood out there in the pouring rain, beating on those pins which hold the tandems in place, and slid the tandems all the way to the rear of the trailer. I was still over weight on the tandems. I knew these guys were messing with me now. They went from one extreme to the other. I figured I only had a few scales to cross, so I’d try and hit them at night when they’d be closed. Off to the truck stop in Emporia I went. I still remember eating a seafood buffet and being surprised at the nearly 10% sales tax that I was charged there. I went back out to my truck and did some paperwork. It was just starting to get dark. I watched as a truck with a load of pipe was leaving the truck stop and was forced to slam on his brakes as a car came zipping over the hill. The pipe on his trailer slid to the front and hit his headache rack. Sadly for him, his headache rack was attached to the tractor, so he was now unable to turn his truck. He had to back up in a straight line (which he was thankfully able to do) and then he had to unhook his trailer. As I was getting ready to go to bed, there were forklifts starting to show up to work on his load. I then went to bed. It was still a constant rain.
I woke up very early the next morning. It might have been 2 or three in the morning. The truck whose load of pipe had shifted forward was now gone. He must have gotten it all figured out and got on his way. It was still raining, dark and gloomy. I left the truck stop and headed north up to Petersburg, then Richmond, Virginia via I-95 and then grabbed I-64 and headed west. Out past Charlottesville, there is a section of I-64 like no other interstate that I have traveled before. Due to the mountains, trees, elevation, and other factors, there is a considerable amount of fog in this area. There have been several deadly wrecks along this stretch, all attributed to poor visibility due to fog. For this reason, they installed lights into the roadway of I-64, like an airport runway. This particular morning, the interstate was lit up because of the rain and fog, and I got the pleasure of driving down the interstate this way, the only time that I had traveled this stretch with the lights on.
By the time I reached West Virginia, the rain was breaking up and by the time I got into Kentucky, the sun started coming out again. By the time I got home, it was typical fall like weather back in Iowa. It was sunny, dry, and cool. The load that I had on had to deliver in Des Moines and I had a few extra days before my delivery date, so I stopped at the house. The hurricane made landfall while I was sitting in my easy chair back home in Wadena. Isabelle wreaked a lot of havoc on that area. The main culprit was all that rain and flooding. They had problems with sever flooding all the way into West Virginia, where I had been only days earlier. Thankfully I got out of that area before the bulk of the storm hit, but I do remember that while I was watching television back in Suffolk, the night before I loaded in Severn, Isabelle was a Category 5 Hurricane, but was still a couple of days out at least. Yet, it was raining.
I delivered my load to Firestone in Des Moines and I told them that they were lucky to get their shipment as the place I had loaded from was getting smacked around by that hurricane. The guy shrugged his shoulders. To him, Severn, North Carolina could have been on another planet for all he was concerned. He was busy, working, and the weather was beautiful outside! I had experiences like this a lot when I drove semi. Like Mary Poppins, I popped in to and out of people’s lives and their parts of the country. Now that I’ve sat here to home for about 8 years, I try and remind myself that what I see on the news is reality for someone out there, far from me. For those poor people in Mexico, I can empathize with them. While I have never sat through a hurricane while it has hit, I have seen what it’s like in the days leading up to one. It’s miserable and it’s wet! So when they say that it’s raining in Mexico while they prepare for this Hurricane Patricia, it reminds me of that time I had just a fleeting moment with Hurricane Isabelle in 2003.
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