Friday, March 11, 2016.
Rain We'll Remember.
The six inches of rain predicted for the next few days came down convincingly overnight and throughout the day. I transmitted the radio show from my desk at home to avoid problems.
Mary Ann changed her plans, too. She was to drive to Los Angeles during the next two days, taking a break in the 2400 miles at a charming little hotel I know in Alpine, Texas. But when she called the hotel, she discovered that not only was it already booked up, but all the other hotels and motels in the little town were full, too. It's Spring Break for the kids at Sul Ross State University. So much for the marathon drive. She has an aversion to spending the night in El Paso. She will fly to our son's house tomorrow, and will remain there as de facto baby sitter for our grandson Jackson for a few weeks as Jude's wife Suzanne returns to work.
Mary Ann is relieved. I'm very happy she has given up the idea of a cross-country solo drive. It's got to be really bad to stop this woman of mine.
At lunchtime, we go to Keith Young's Steak House and meet up with MA's brother Patrick, whose birthday is today. En route we see a lot of water piled up in deep puddles, but nothing that looks disastrous. Meanwhile, the weather authorities are telling us of a deluge, saying that some areas need to be evacuated. What?
[caption id="attachment_45087" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Keith Young's (and my) oysters Bienville.[/caption]
MA has a shrimp remoulade salad, and her bro eats a spinach salad with chicken. I have a quartet of oysters Bienville, which I order almost every time I come here. Keith told me that the basic recipe came from
Tom Fitzmorris's New Orleans Food. I'm just making sure it's still good enough to stay on the menu. As if Keith would ever put anything substandard on his tables.
On his way home to Folsom, Patrick finds that the roads to his house are flooded. He and his family have to stay in a hotel tonight. We offer space for his gang, but they are already checked in. He is not the only one with this problem. Before it's all over, hundreds of people will be out of their homes. Many of them escape by boat or helicopter.
When MA and I head out to dinner (it must seem to some readers that all we ever do is eat) we come to a ten-yard stretch of LA 21 that has a shallow flow of water crossing it. Judging by the dozen or so cars in front of us, we can make it across with no problems. But I will not come back this way.
Mary Ann wants to take a look at Chimes, her favorite place that I dislike. Chimes hangs across a large section of the Bogue Falaya River, a major drainage for Covington. By tomorrow, water will be on the verge of pouring into the restaurant itself. The family of goats that lives down in the river bed have been rescued, we hear.
Our dinner is at Zea. Guacamole (it still needs to be reformulated), chicken and tortilla soup and a double order of the fabulous Asian oysters.
We go home by way of the I-12 to LA 59. No flooding anywhere around there, although we encounter a stretch of loose sand whose function is not clear.
Mary Ann makes fun of my keeping up with the weather radar. I admit that there may be something to the idea that when we know too much about an impending problem, the problem grows in our minds.
Keith Young's Steak House. Madisonville: 165 LA 21. 985-845-9940.
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Saturday, March 12, 2016.
Deluge Here And There.
When I awaken, I am relieved that the large shallow puddles covering about ten percent of the Cool Water Ranch have shrunk during the night. The high water never did cross our road nor kept us out of our houses--as has happened a dozen times over the twenty-five years we've lived here.
Mary Ann gets ready to head to the airport and Los Angeles. When we get to Claiborne Hill--the entrance to Covington--we see that the flow of water across the road is gone. But we also see that the bridge across the Bogue Falaya is behind barricades. Covington is under voluntary evacuation.
I rush MA to the airport. Traffic is very heavy, but not in the direction we're heading. The weather at the airport is benign. No rain, just some scattered dark clouds. Off MA goes.
I rush home, because I continue to get emergency reports from the weather services. The rivers--Bogue Falaya, Abita, and most of all the Tchefuncte--are all very high. This is not as much because of the rain, but due to five days of strong winds from the east. Lake Pontchartrain--the usual dastard in flooding episodes around New Orleans--is extraordinarily high. The rivers flow into the lake, but the lake has no more room for their water. So the water starts backing up.
I have brunch at the Fat Spoon, which stands not far from the banks of the Bogue Falaya. The owners tell me that they are short several employees who are flooded out.
[caption id="attachment_37472" align="alignnone" width="450"]
Fat Spoon's eggs Sardou and brabant potatoes. [/caption]
This place gets better and better. I have eggs Sardou, made as well as any other in my life with the exception of Brennan's. The side dish is cubes of browned potatoes. I ask about their provenance. "We cut them ourselves," the waitress says. "Then we brown them in butter." That makes them genuine brabants--something you don't see very often.
I am scheduled to go on the air at two in the afternoon, but a basketball game intervenes. Diane Newman calls to ask me to extend my show an extra hour. I am to go into full emergency mode, interviewing authorities and such. WWL, with its flamethrower signal, is the official emergency radio station for the entire area, and where everybody turns during heavy weather.
Among my credentials as a Real Radio Guy are a number of stints broadcasting through storms. That started in the 1970s on WGSO 1280, where I was on the air through the night during Hurricane Frederic and a few others. On WWL, I did two or three other storms, but my memory of them is blotted out by that of Katrina, for which I broadcast for six hours overnight on the Sunday when the whole city was evacuating.
Then and again today, the big issue is avoiding traffic backups. They can turn a few minutes into hours. It happened again today, mostly on I-12 West. Water came up over one lane of a long section of the roadway. People behind this backup tell me they were in it for three to four hours.
Even though the ditches around me show no signs of flooding, I decide I will not press my luck and stay home the rest of the day. After a nice nap, I have a sandwich of Chisesi ham, a New York cheddar, and Susan Spicer's multi-grain bread. Later in the evening, I shake a martini, the first cocktail I've made at home for over a year. It was the perfect thing. For a guy home alone after a stressful day.
Fat Spoon Cafe. Covington: 2807 N US Highway 190. 985-893-5111.
Keith Young's (and my) oysters Bienville.[/caption]
MA has a shrimp remoulade salad, and her bro eats a spinach salad with chicken. I have a quartet of oysters Bienville, which I order almost every time I come here. Keith told me that the basic recipe came from Tom Fitzmorris's New Orleans Food. I'm just making sure it's still good enough to stay on the menu. As if Keith would ever put anything substandard on his tables.
On his way home to Folsom, Patrick finds that the roads to his house are flooded. He and his family have to stay in a hotel tonight. We offer space for his gang, but they are already checked in. He is not the only one with this problem. Before it's all over, hundreds of people will be out of their homes. Many of them escape by boat or helicopter.
When MA and I head out to dinner (it must seem to some readers that all we ever do is eat) we come to a ten-yard stretch of LA 21 that has a shallow flow of water crossing it. Judging by the dozen or so cars in front of us, we can make it across with no problems. But I will not come back this way.
Mary Ann wants to take a look at Chimes, her favorite place that I dislike. Chimes hangs across a large section of the Bogue Falaya River, a major drainage for Covington. By tomorrow, water will be on the verge of pouring into the restaurant itself. The family of goats that lives down in the river bed have been rescued, we hear.
Our dinner is at Zea. Guacamole (it still needs to be reformulated), chicken and tortilla soup and a double order of the fabulous Asian oysters.
We go home by way of the I-12 to LA 59. No flooding anywhere around there, although we encounter a stretch of loose sand whose function is not clear.
Mary Ann makes fun of my keeping up with the weather radar. I admit that there may be something to the idea that when we know too much about an impending problem, the problem grows in our minds.
Fat Spoon's eggs Sardou and brabant potatoes. [/caption]
This place gets better and better. I have eggs Sardou, made as well as any other in my life with the exception of Brennan's. The side dish is cubes of browned potatoes. I ask about their provenance. "We cut them ourselves," the waitress says. "Then we brown them in butter." That makes them genuine brabants--something you don't see very often.
I am scheduled to go on the air at two in the afternoon, but a basketball game intervenes. Diane Newman calls to ask me to extend my show an extra hour. I am to go into full emergency mode, interviewing authorities and such. WWL, with its flamethrower signal, is the official emergency radio station for the entire area, and where everybody turns during heavy weather.
Among my credentials as a Real Radio Guy are a number of stints broadcasting through storms. That started in the 1970s on WGSO 1280, where I was on the air through the night during Hurricane Frederic and a few others. On WWL, I did two or three other storms, but my memory of them is blotted out by that of Katrina, for which I broadcast for six hours overnight on the Sunday when the whole city was evacuating.
Then and again today, the big issue is avoiding traffic backups. They can turn a few minutes into hours. It happened again today, mostly on I-12 West. Water came up over one lane of a long section of the roadway. People behind this backup tell me they were in it for three to four hours.
Even though the ditches around me show no signs of flooding, I decide I will not press my luck and stay home the rest of the day. After a nice nap, I have a sandwich of Chisesi ham, a New York cheddar, and Susan Spicer's multi-grain bread. Later in the evening, I shake a martini, the first cocktail I've made at home for over a year. It was the perfect thing. For a guy home alone after a stressful day.
