Enter the Hurricane

June 22, 2015

On this day 43 years ago, the remnants of Hurricane Agnes visited the Southern Tier of New York State, with flooding over a vast swath of the New York-Pennsylvania border. Linda and I awoke in the early morning hours to the sound of rushing water. I peered into the semi-darkness to see the creek that usually flowed about six feet below the level of our driveway was now lapping at our front door. I woke Linda, then my brother and sister-in-law who were visiting with their year-old baby. We needed to evacuate...now! There was one small problem: one of our former youth group members was sleeping off a bit of a hangover in his car which he had parked in our driveway sometime during the night. After furiously banging on the windows for what seemed like a small eternity, he slowly began to stir.

Everyone loaded themselves into their respective vehicles and headed up the road to our friends Al and Eleanore, where my brother and sister-in-law settled in for a few nights stay. We were doing our best to keep abreast of the road reports, as they were being closed all around us. Wherever we were is where we were going to be for at least a few days. But there was a second problem: Linda was nine months pregnant, and due any day. The maternity wing of Jones Memorial Hospital in Wellsville collapsed into the Genesee River, so there was no going there. Her obstetrician was based in Olean, so we hadn't really planned on going to Wellsville, but getting to St. Francis in Olean would prove to be somewhat of a challenge, beginning with the fact that our car was in the shop for repairs.

Dick Travis was a big man, towering over me by about three inches, and outweighing me by perhaps 100 pounds. He was my boss at the Minute Man gas station, having bypassed a list of potential gas jockeys some eight months previously to give me 40 hours when Linda told him tearfully that she had to quit her job due to complications with her pregnancy. Dick was not only big; he was profane and what church people would call "worldly," loving his alcohol, smokes, and womanizing. But he also had a big heart, and on that day when roads were being shut down, he managed to pick his way into Alma via the Stony Lonesome Road, dodging rocks and boulders that had washed into the roadway. He insisted we take his big Buick 88 Wildcat convertible to Olean, so we did. Part way, at least. In Weston's Mills, the Allegany had overflowed, blocking the roadway. While I looked for a place to park the car, the local firemen took Linda in an Army duck across the water to the hospital.

I managed to hitch a ride across the flooded road and spent the next three days bagging sand, and the next three nights sleeping on a two-person love seat in the lobby of the hospital. Linda delivered Nathan that afternoon without the benefit of an attending physician, who was evacuating his home. Nathan has been taking the world by storm ever since, giving us over the years our share of challenges, and more than our share of blessings, both of which we have received with gratitude, as they both give us opportunity to draw close to the God who entrusted him to us.