St. Augustine, Florida \u2014\u00a0\u201cBoy, one big bubba truck riding down the road could have swamped her,\u201d the friend said. I was telling him about my mother\u2019s house in downtown St. Augustine. When I got back into St. Augustine early Saturday morning \u2014 cutting down a side street clogged with debris and garbage and tree branches \u2014 I pulled into her driveway and shined a light through her door to see twinkling cat eyes staring at me. Then I noticed the high water line along the siding. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s where the flood waters stopped. Barely an inch from her doorway. <\/p>\n
That was how close her house came to flooding. Had the storm jogged a few miles west \u2014 had that \u201cbubba truck\u201d ridden down Riberia Street \u2014 it would have been a different story. <\/p>\n
Remarkable. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s one of the lucky ones. I was, too, and my brother.
\n<\/p>\n
Take a drive through other streets downtown, or out to Davis Shores, or the beaches, and it\u2019s an entirely different story. It\u2019s a city and a county I can\u2019t even recognize, filled with heartbreak, exhaustion and exasperation. <\/p>\n
I went running through Davis Shores early Sunday morning, two days after the storm. It\u2019s one of my regular routes, but that morning it felt awkward. Uncomfortable. Like I shouldn\u2019t be there. Like I was running through people\u2019s living rooms \u2014 invading their personal privacy. <\/p>\n
Because I was. Out by the road \u2014\u00a0like houses turned inside-out \u2014\u00a0were all of their water-logged belongings \u2014\u00a0sofas, TVs, picture frames, furniture, clothes, beds, books, appliances. I tried not to look as I ran. I felt ashamed for being there. A gawker or a sightseer. That it wasn\u2019t my business to know what they owned \u2014\u00a0what they now had to toss out. <\/p>\n
I also felt guilt. That I was out running when so many were hurting. I stopped at a house where someone was working and asked if I could help. <\/p>\n
\u201cActually, I\u2019m helping someone else,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re OK.\u201d <\/p>\n
It made me want to do more. <\/p>\n
A Facebook post from Zach Lively, a fellow Flagler College alumnus and a band member in The Wobbly Toms, told how he was sweeping and mopping his flooded house. \u201cThen, I\u2019ll be looking to help out other folks wherever I can. There’s a lot of decent people in the world,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t been able to get that post out of my mind. <\/p>\n
We seem so polarized as a nation. Maybe it\u2019s the political season, but the anger and division is palpable. Yet, this storm made me realize that just isn\u2019t true. We still pull together and help one another. It\u2019s just who we are. <\/p>\n
A tree trimmer dispatched from Indiana was working on a massive oak that toppled on my street. He said he liked being able to come down and help out in disasters. \u201cI feel blessed to be able to do it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Blessed to be able to help? What a powerful thing to say. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re all a bit blessed right now. And as the lucky ones, it\u2019s our chance to keep sharing it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
St. Augustine, Florida \u2014\u00a0\u201cBoy, one big bubba truck riding down the road could have swamped her,\u201d the friend said. I was telling him about my mother\u2019s house in downtown St. Augustine. When I got back into St. Augustine early Saturday morning \u2014 cutting down a side street clogged with debris and garbage and tree branches \u2014 I pulled into her driveway and shined a light through her door to see twinkling cat eyes staring at me. Then I noticed the high water line along the siding. It\u2019s where the flood waters stopped. Barely an inch from her doorway. That was how close her house came to flooding. Had the storm jogged a few miles west \u2014 had that \u201cbubba truck\u201d ridden down Riberia Street \u2014 it would have been a different story. Remarkable. She\u2019s one of the lucky ones. I was, too, and my brother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[554,569],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-nutshells","category-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1504"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1507,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions\/1507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}