|
"No matter how strong the storm, how hard the rain and how vicious the wind, there is always a gap in the clouds for the light to shine through." - Ben Greenhalgh
This isn't a normal GroveZine - trust me, it's one that I wouldn't have ever wanted to be sending. We had a storm event happen in Jefferson, and The Grove got hit. Everything's going to be okay, though... it could have been a MILLION times worse. We were out of town at the time - we loaded up the Griswold Family Truckster and headed down to Galveston where we met our family for some time on the island. A day or so into the trip, I got a call from a neighbor who was in a panic because he said that a tornado had come through the neighborhood. Not only was the power out, but the storm had snapped power poles like toothpicks all up and down the street. Power lines were down, hanging from the poles and looping down onto the ground like spider webs. He told me that because a tree was down he couldn't see our house, so of course we feared the worst.
A little later, one of my friends grabbed a flashlight and braved the dark and the rain to walk the property and gave us a report. A good third of our front fence was destroyed, several panels of the back fence were down, our front power pole was hit, etc, etc, but the house itself appeared to be completely untouched. The biggest casualty was the 160+ year-old pecan tree that stood in front of the house. The storm snapped it off about 10~12 feet above the ground and sent the huge limbs in all different directions. It took down a lot of the front fence, blocked Moseley Street in front of the house, and was responsible for a lot of the power line damage at The Grove.
The power to the city was restored within 24 hours, and when friends were able to assess things in the cold, gray light of dawn (as the bluegrass songs say) and the house itself looked unharmed, we decided to finish out the last few days of our vacation. There's a lot of discussion in town as to whether it was a tornado, straight-line winds, or a downburst from the storm, but in the end that really doesn't matter. Our property was really torn up, but thankfully (very thankfully) the house was spared. We're not going to be doing tours for the foreseeable future, at least until we can get things cleaned up and get the potentially dangerous situations dealt with. We have a number of large limbs that snapped but didn't fall, so they're hanging precariously like the Sword of Damocles. As of this writing we still don't have the house phone, internet, email, or television, but we do have electricity and are very thankful for that. It's killing us to be without email, but we're making do.
These are just a few photos of the property after the storm - we had damage a few yards away on every side of the house: north, south, east, and west, but nothing on the house was touched. The flag was still flying on the front of the house, even though the front light a few feet away from it was destroyed. Nothing disturbed the back porch at all, and the pillows didn't even blow off the furniture on the front gallery. It's as if there was a dome of protection over the house, and for that, we're very, very thankful!
Here's what's coming up around Jefferson...
9/16-9/17/2022 - Jefferson Antique Tractor Show
This is a free subscription ezine for friends of The Grove - in other words, we NEVER arbitrarily add email addresses. We also NEVER sell or share email addresses with anyone else. Feel free to pass the GroveZine on to your friends - all I ask is that if you forward it, please include the header, trailer and everything. Thanks! To subscribe, just go to The Grove's Website and put your email in the blank at the left bottom of the page. To unsubscribe, although we'd sincerely hate to lose you, simply follow the directions at the bottom of this email. |
