Fortunate on many levels
Well, the Florida house came through the storm just fine. Our town was in a lucky patch that escaped the worst of Hurricane Matthew.
Last week at this time, I was writing about what was coming. The farmer, who was at the house to prepare it for our next tenants, decided to head for safer ground. He and the little dog, Smoothie, spent all of Thursday and Friday on Florida interstates with several million other people, trying to outrun the wind and rain that was chasing them.
By Thursday afternoon, he’d been creeping along in traffic for 10 hours. It was time for a rest.
His daughter and I spent the rest of the day trying to find a hotel room, first in the Gainesville area (sold out), then the Tallahassee area (nope) and then, southern Georgia (not there, either). Those travel websites sure are handy. They save you 80 phones calls, but in a lodging crisis, it’s unnerving to log into Expedia to see nothing but red banners all over, announcing there’s no room at the inn. Any inn.
As the farmer continued to drive, not knowing where or if he would stop for the night, I decided to try a different approach. I went on Facebook and posted what I called a “Hail Mary pass,” asking if anyone had friends or family along the I-75 corridor who could offer the farmer a place to sleep for the night. We would pay.
It was a version of a “Go Fund Me” page, but something more along the lines of a “Go Tuck Me In” page.
Within minutes the messages began. My Facebook friends told me of cousins and friends and former co-workers who lived in Florida and Georgia, and would I like them to reach out?
Offers of a warm bed came from all over: from North Carolina and South Carolina and Atlanta; we declined those because they were seven or more hours away, and he wouldn’t be able to drive that far that night. A few in Florida offered their spare rooms but had to retract the offers when the evacuation orders chased them from their homes, too.
And among all those kind offers, there was this one:
The friend of a friend of a neighbor had evacuated and found a room with one bed in a motel far into the Florida panhandle. It would be occupied that night by the husband, his wife, an 84-year-old mother-in-law and two dogs.
“If he can get here, he’s welcome to share the room,” they said of the long-traveling farmer. Whom they do not know from Adam.
We declined, of course. But we were moved and charmed by the blind, selfless kindness of those people. I’m glad they all had a warm place to stay that night.
The farmer finally gave up on a hotel and went looking for a rest stop. Even those were filled; he had to drive for a while to find an open parking space. He and Smoothie slept in the truck for two nights, before receiving the all clear that it was safe to return to the coast.
There, he found a small tree had fallen in the front yard, and the power was out. But the swimming pool that he’d drained two days before was now refilled by the storm’s rain. Even the lemons and mangoes were still on the trees.
We caught a break, when so many others did not. Sometimes things just spin that way, and we are grateful.
And our gratitude extends beyond our property. All those friends on Facebook – the people we know, those we sort of know, and those we don’t really know at all – can sometimes show they really are friends, in the truest sense of the word.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.