The actual anniversary of Hurricane Celia is August 3, still a week away, but yesterday's post got me thinking about the storm and its aftermath.
Natural disasters bring out the best and the worst in people, and we saw multiple examples of both. Here are just a few examples:
- A day or two after the storm, we saw the Red Cross selling coffee and donuts downtown, while a block away, the Salvation Army was giving away free meals.
- The woman who ran the concessions at the Corpus Christi Colosseum was actually arrested for selling 10 lb. sacks of ice for $10. Meanwhile, the local Budweiser distributor was bringing in truckloads of ice from San Antonio. Drive by their warehouse with your trunk open and they would give you a 50 lb. sack for free. They continued to do that until lights were back on throughout the area.
- Speaking of driving, with no lights there was no way to pump gas. You were limited to whatever you had in your tank until an enterprising owner of the Gulf station on Ocean Drive figured out how to run his pump with a fan belt attached to an lawn edger. He could have charged just about anything, but he kept his price the same. He did impose a 5 gallon limit.
- Our next-door neighbor, a retired elementary school teacher that I had always found annoying, turned out to be an angel in disguise. She had the only gas stove on the block, and for days she brought breakfast around to all the neighbors.
No comments:
Post a Comment