| Ice Storm 2009: Days Two & Three: Getting Back to Basics |
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| February 8, 2009 |
January 28th: Day Two of the Big Ice that crippled all of Western Kentucky and much of the rest of the state (though we had no way of knowing it).
So, Ivan says to me first thing Wednesday morning. "Well. The storm is over. It can't get any worse". 
My pithy reply of "Shut up and don't tempt fate." is drowned out by the crashing of a huge tree falling across Jefferson Street, blocking our drive. He was right in a way. No one was hurt. The tree missed the mobile home and our house. Considering it was strong enough to pull up slabs of sidewalk, it could have been much worse.
Our cell phones are dead. Everyone who has AT & T cell phones have no service. Cingular customers have service. Oddly, the AT & T land line in my office works for long distance, but not locally. We call the emergency number and are told that the only restaurant serving food is Ruby Faye's. Later we discover that wasn't accurate - Nicky McClanahan "spent the night at the pit" and kept his BBQ place going throughout the power outage.
The roads aren't slick and we drive out to Ruby Faye's for breakfast. Proprietors Ken and Ann Jewell and Gordon and Ruth Ann Samples have family to help out. They get a generator going (one of three they would eventually hook up) and never stopped cooking. .JPG) That's Gordon in the background trying to get another generator.
In Clinton, the grocery store and Dollar Store are closed. No gas stations have generators to pump their gas. Banks are closed. The county courthouse is surrounded by downed trees. The Wal-Mart at Fulton (the closest one to us) is closed. Farther south, we're told, everything is open. One wag calls Martin Tennessee "Hickman County South" because of the number of Hickman County plates he sees.
After breakfast, we drive down to Union City Tennessee. It's twenty miles south more or less, but a world away in weather terms. There are outages, but the storm's fury didn't hit quite so hard. The Wal-Mart is open and we don't even have to wait in line.
After Day Two, the days run together. Now we ask ourselves, did that happen Thursday? Wednesday? Like the nightmare it was, it's all becoming a blurred memory.
The First United Methodist Church of Clinton became a warming shelter. Our pastor, Aaron, worked tirelessly to get it started. Volunteers put up flyers that it was open. The first night, we sheltered around 20 people. Cots came from Texas - a good son in law drove them up along with generators for his wife's family. Unfolding a cot is an exercise in daylight with instructions. By night, it was a community effort. Luckily, Henry (in the green coat) remembered his Vietnam era cot assembly training. |
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