By Georgia Osten
I wish they had named Laura “Polo,” but I guess, realistically, Laura came first.
I really hate to leave my home. I remember before Ike hit, we had two tropical storms two weekends in a row. We evacuated for all three. Of course, then our beach home was our “vacation” home, our permanent home was in Sugar Land.
That being said, I can’t imagine why I had so many of my valuable things down at the beach? Valuable isn’t the right word, emotional, is more like it. There was the Coke sign, the leather couch I begged my son to bring down to the beach for me, 30 years of Christmas decorations and all my shrimp boat pictures lining the inside stairway.
Ike took them all! The downstairs was gutted, the water reached the upstairs floor. During the storm, something crashed into the upper right corner, leaving a huge gap where water gushed in sweeping the dining room into the kitchen, buckling all the laminate flooring, destroying all the furniture.
Two weeks later, we were able to come over to the Peninsula, the devastation was indescribable, not a blade of grass, sand covered everything, there was a huge lake carved out of the front yard, probably by a tornado. We brought a flatbed trailer with us just in case there was anything we could recover. We managed to load the trailer. Everything else had to go. There was a non-profit service group who came down to specifically level homes where necessary. They sorted through everything, soft items like beds & sofas went into one pile. Items like refrigerators, tables and such were piled into another pile to be picked up and destroyed.
I don’t think Marco will be any threat, but we need to watch Laura. Leave or stay – it’s a difficult choice to make. We hate to leave our homes. Those folks with RV’s can just pull their homes along with them. Many RV-ers have checked out already.
I hope you make the right decision, I hope you remain safe. We’ll all catch up at the end of the week to share our stories.
[Aug-24-2020]
Posted in 
Dear Cutie #1,
You described living at, and leaving the beach eloquently. May all go well with you and yours. We hope that Laura is benign. In the meantime, we pray for our beloved peninsula and residents.
Cutie #2