In search for old Ike

So, what is the deal with projecting where Hurricane Ike will hit the Texas coast? Dart boards full of cheap darts thrown by folks in bars have a better history of sustained aim, it seems. The forecasters have succeeded in throwing panic into everyone on the whole Texas Gulf coast, all the people who live hundreds of miles inland in almost every direction, and now the projected path is getting near the Louisiana coast!

Those of us in the Corpus Christi area are heaving large sighs of relief, while the ones who don't have access to the Internet to follow the latest projections are still buying up plywood and hammering, hammering sheet after sheet of it onto the outside wood of their homes. I went by a dollar store today where the company had hired a glass company from Corpus to drive all the way over here and screw sheets of plywood (not very well it seemed to me) into the aluminum window frames of the storefront. The manager was busy painting over and over again across the (now) plywood front of the store, "WE ARE OPEN."

I guess Sunday will show us who was right and who was wrong about where Ike will pay a visit and where folks just spent hundreds to thousands of dollars per building in vain on shuttering and labor. The economy of the area will take a while to recover from panicked days out of school, days off of work for already stressed parents who have to take care of their children and worry about hurricane damage and whether they will have a job next week.

But, when it is all over and done with, some of us will have the chance to meet Ike. Good luck in surviving the handshake and the slap on the back. We'll be praying for ya.