Claudette Ravages Texas Coast Like Mean-Hearted Woman in Blues Song
Texas just plain done wrong by lowdown tropical storm
WHIT PISTOL
Broken-hearted and ball-busted Texans pick up the pieces
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Sweet mercy! Texans are still rebuilding their shattered lives after last week’s “just plain cold” brutalizing of the Galveston Bay area by heartless hurricane Claudette.
Like an insufferable tropical cocktease, that hurricane moved in and out of the Gulf of Mexico with threatening promise until attacking the Texas coastline with unrelenting moxy. Damages were estimated easily into five-digits, possibly six with the option for seven, and over 30,000 Texans were left without power. Electric power, not power in the Marx-Engels sense.
It was a double-decker sadness sandwich for residents of the Texas coast, who found their homes and livelihood torn up like the love of a good-lovin’ bluesman. Ol’ Claudette, she knocked over houses and blew down powerlines with a blow from those puckered-up metaphorical lips of hers and left all Texans lower than low. Some residents were desperate for electricity and shelter again, and even though Gov. Rick Perry promised disaster relief and the American Red Cross offered help to those hit hardest by the storm, it was little consolation after being so brutally used and abused by a hard-hearted bitch with a max wind speed of 85 mph.
“I lived in that wreck that used to be my house all my life,” said 10-year-old Bob Phelps, a part-time investment banker and pretend Indian. “Claudette rolls in here like a storm and leaves everything all busted up. A lot like a storm, very much so, really. And all this debris, it’s just like the inside of my little ol’ heart.”
Some grief-stricken residents, like cat fancier Elvin Harper, hoped Claudette would follow earlier predictions of losing intensity before reaching the coast.
“I had friends who said she was just a pretty coastal wind, but I knew better,” said Harper, searching through cat debris to salvage what he could. “That hurricane was no good, and she messed Texas up good. It just ain’t right, I’m telling you the truth.”
Used to being turned inside out by tough-lovin’ women, local blues players were among the first to recover from the storm. Though electricity was still out in the town, renowned blues legend Galveston Larry had words none-too-kind for the Category-1 storm in an all-acoustic set at Victoria tavern Benny’s.
“That Claudette, she’s a tough-lovin’ woman,” Larry advised, seeking a harmonica affirmation from fellow musician “Luckless” Gary Woodland. “She done rolled in over me, all up and down me—you hear what I’m sayin’, Gary? And she flattened my trailer like thousand-pound anvil. Just like in Bugs Bunny cartoon or something.”
Despite the poor simile, most residents suffering the aftermath of the tropical storm could identify with Larry’s feelings.
“It’s just sad, wrenches your insides all up,” said steel worker and aspiring dancer Clara Gumption. “You can run into good weather systems every day of your life, it only takes one bad one to ruin it for everybody. But I don’t hold no grudges. My main concern is getting on with everything, not cursing Claudette to Hades. She’ll get what’s coming to her some day, she’s going to stroll into the wrong town and get herself messed up like she done to Texas.”
the commune news got itself turned all around by that upstairs neighbor magazine, True Love Quarterly, but she thinks she too good for a low-down web publication like us. Stigmata Spent, on the other hand, ain’t too good for anybody. Often quite the opposite.
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