When The Storm Hits
By: Jed Jallorina
Have you ever been somewhere that’s so quiet, even the thoughts in your head are deafening in comparison? One of the things I love about Texas, and people who have visited the state will tell you this too, is the silence. The silence that dominates the brisk mornings, when the sun has just barely crested the golden sea of Indiangrass across from your front yard, and the warm evenings, when the smell of brisket and burnt dust lingers in the remnants of afternoon-baked air. But the silence isn’t necessarily just an absence of sound; it’s the absence of hostility. There’s none of the politics, family feuds, or shouting matches on the street that you’ll get in other places. That’s what I love the most about Harris County, and about Texas in general: the silence.
But my home state seems to have somewhat of a bad reputation up here in Pennsylvania. Oblivious northerners would interrogate me about my state’s economy, its recent natural disasters, and its residents. But rather than be insulted by my new friends’ lack of decorum, I started to wonder: is this really how people in the northern states see the south? As someforgotten corner of the country that’s been left to rot in the dust?
“I just never hear good things about the south,” said my friend Ben, a native Philly resident, when I asked him about it. “No offense.” He didn’t take his eyes off the Eagles game as I interviewed him. He said it like it was just another fact of life, like he was talking about the weather, or something. And it broke my heart. All my life, I’d grown to love the south and the people I’d been raised with. How could it be that others looked down on my home with such disdain?
When I decided to text my friend Beau asking for help with some interview questions, he was more than happy to help. He recounted to me a personal experience he had amidst the devastation of Hurricane Harvey a few years ago.
Beau and his dad had been in Houston buying storm supplies when Harvey decided to hit early. Beau and his dad were caught driving down a county highway outside the city when rainstarted pouring down, and the dirt road turned to mud. They ended up sliding into a ditch which was rapidly filling with stormwater. Their beat-up Jeep Wrangler found itself half submerged in the mud, and Beau and his dad started to panic.
Just then, a lone white pickup truck rolled up behind them, and two men got out. They both sported hunting camouflage and had gaiters covering their faces. Beau initially thought they were looters coming to finish them off, but they weren’t. They were just two guys in cowboy boots and storm gear, driving around in their pickup, looking for people to help. And by some miracle, they had found my friend.
As the rain started pounding down harder and harder, and the wind picked up to a hellish speed, the two men apparently forced the door of Beau’s jeep open and helped him and his dad get out. They proceeded to attach their Ford’s cable winch to the bumper of the Wrangler andpull it out of the mud with no trouble at all.
“They wouldn’t accept any payment my dad offered,” Beau told me. “They just said, it’s what neighbors do, and went on their way.”
The image of two southerners sporting hunting camo, work boots, and driving a pickup may be laughably stereotypical to some northerners, but to me it represents my home, and what most people overlook about it: its residents.
There’s an unspoken understanding in the south – it’s that, no matter your politics, personal reservations, or prejudices, when the storm hits, you set all that aside and do what needs to be done. I remember the storm myself. I remember riding around flooded neighborhoods with my friends, helping strangers clean up what was left of their homes, and seeing countless fellow Texans doing the same. I remember seeing one man, whose front yard infamously sported a confederate flag, helping a Hispanic family into his pickup to get them to dry ground. I saw anti-government family friends, outspoken critics of “those rich men north of Richmond”, clearing a road so FEMA and National Guard trucks could pass through.
People can say what they want about the south, and some of those things just might even be true. But I agree with what Beau told me at the end of our interview: “I don’t think I’d ever want to leave.”