SANDY STRIKES...AGAIN?

Growing up in northern New Jersey hurricanes were introduced to my life mainly via television as sometimes we saw what had happened to one of the Caribbean islands or poor ole Florida.

For the first time in my life I saw the real live effects of a Hurricane as I visited Homestead Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. I was there working with some insurance companies and I was amazed to see a whole street of houses reduced to a series of painted red numbers in the ground. Those numbers represented the houses and in some cases lives that had literally been blown away by this weather disaster.

A few years later I saw more Hurricane damage up-close as I visited Fort Bragg North Carolina just after Hurricane Fran had destroyed the entire Cape Fear area.  I remember that it looked like some big giant had walked around and arbitrarily pulled trees by their roots, telephone poles, and street signs out of the ground and just dropped them wherever.

These experiences did nothing to prepare me of the events of Hurricane Sandy -- I had never actually been in a Hurricane before. I will never forget the dooming sound of the wind approaching, sounding like a train in the distance and then feeling the surrounded impact of the wind as it seemingly engulfed my mother's house. 

I wil never forget the astonishment as we found out the next day a tree was knocked down and missed my mother's bedroom window by about 5 inches -- or less.

We were all reminded of a song we sing at church. "I trust in God, I know He cares for me."

Now that I think about it, I dated a young lady named Sandy while I was in college...that is a whole other chapter.