Notes on Hurricane Andrew

Hearty sun tans. No trees, no leaves, no shade. For those with no roofs anymore, you could get a sun tan just standing inside.

Rite Aid. Just the front of the store selling aspirin, sunbloc (see above) the rest dark, plastic sheeting, and a big broken off branch keeping the door open.

"It was like a war zone." Actually, Yes. No Homestead police station left, no town hall. Curfew, no liquor sold in Homestead (till the following Christmas.) We had the 84th Airborne division camped round the corner at the Redland schools. They and their trucks were all in sandy camouflage- right from Desert Storm. Hurricane Andrew led to the biggest deployment since the first Gulf war. Our daughter came home holding MRE's, just like an Iraqi child.

"Something banging." I heard this clanging all night of the storm, making a mental note "Must fix that in the morning." In fact it was all the orchid houses, the metal posts, falling one by one.

September,-or was it even October? On the exact date of Andrew, a late afternoon, I suddenly saw the ceiling fans start to turn slowly. Power was back. From then on, once again, my modern world would spring to attention at the touch of a switch, ready to serve. And I felt a pang: n 24 hours I knew I would have settled right back into that pre-Andrew, soft, undemanding, indulgent life.