Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Things they didn’t tell me

A--- thinks the wind is a whole lot of fun.
There are things no one told me about my town before we moved here. Most of them require some small adjustment before moving on, others are seriously annoying.
Our community is rimmed by military bases so there are many places I am just not allowed to go. One such base borders the road my husband uses to drive to work each day, and the border is patrolled. He said one day as he was driving to work he looked across the fence to see a hummer sprouting several machine-gun toting servicemen keeping pace with him.
I had only been here a month when I took my oldest son, who was then a first grader, to his first day of school. Among the parents walking with there children was a mother dressed in full military gear, holding her daughter’s hand.
I find the military presence in my community interesting and somewhat comforting.
I am less pleased with the wind.
My town is tucked against a mountain, facing a wide expanse of desert. The desert appears to be the world’s longest wind tunnel.
Every storm warning brings at least 24 hours of hurricane-force winds screaming around the house. Last night was one of those nights, and I was afraid to look out the window for fear of seeing a witch riding a bicycle in circles around our house. DH popped out of bed every hour or so to peer out the window and make sure we hadn’t been moved to Kansas in our sleep.
My oldest son has a white knuckle terror of wind. We live a block from his school, but he insisted I drive him there this morning so he didn’t have to walk in the squall. I did manage to get photographs of him, but I think the look on his face says it all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And yet --- people live there happily. It reminds me of people who have lived in SV for years. They complain every year about the snow and cold and yet --- we (and they) live here happily. (or move away I suppose) I'm sort of with Logan wind is not my favorite. I get scared only if it gets to gale force. It doesn't do that here often and that is worth a few degrees of cold to me. That and the lack of cockroaches and other crawlies.

Gwyn Calvetti said...

The photos do indeed tell the story. We aren't quite so influenced by the military, but Fort McCoy is 15 miles away, and some of the scenes you describe are not unusual here, either.

Anonymous said...

I miss you Lady! Danny will be out there this next week or so to fix the roof of the hot tub room Thanks to all the howling wind, it blew the roof off, literally!!

Love ya!
Kendra the Krazy one!!