Emergency

Emergency blip, that is. We're well out of harm's way, being on the opposite coast, but we've been keeping track of Sandy all day via the internet. I've hardly moved off the couch; I have a very swollen and sore ankle, so I'm on ice and watching the storm surge into the northeastern seaboard. Hoping everyone stays safe and the damage isn't extensive.

50 years ago, on Columbus Day, we had a hurricane in the Northwest - a very rare occurrence here. I was 12, and I was home alone after school when the force of it hit. We had a huge old black walnut tree in the front yard, and I watched it come down right in front of the big picture window. I grabbed our dachshund and ran across the street to the neighbors' house - I just didn't want to be alone any longer! When I think of it now, I must have looked a bit like Dorothy with Toto in the Wizard of Oz, getting caught in the tornado.

That storm, with peak gusts of 150 mph, did a lot of damage- big fir trees down all over the region, power outages for weeks, homes damaged and destroyed, and 46 people died as a result of the storm. We were lucky that the walnut tree just took out a little chunk of the garage roof, but it's not something I'll ever forget.