Bessie Lou's Blog

I was only about six moths old when it rolled through, but I have heard many stories about it from my family. We lived in Alvin when it happened... and my parents opted to stay home. My mom said the house was "breathing" ... the walls were moving in and out from the wind and air pressure from the storm. It made a hole in our roof, and when my dad went in the attic to keep the rain out... a squirrel flew in his face! No joke! Luckily my parents, two brothers, and I were not injured... and didn't suffer too much loss or damage.

I do..I lived off Fuqua/Almeda Genoa Road and I45. My mom had all of us kids sleeping in the living room cause she was afraid our bedroom windows would shatter despite the boards over them. I cried when I saw part of the Flagship go into the water.
We went without power for almost 10 days. Our house had a gas oven/stove, we ended up cooking EVERYTHING in our deep freeze, and feeding all my friends, all my sisters' friends, neighbors, everyone with an electric stove came over for a hot meal.
I worked at Toys R Us and we used battery powered adding machines and flashlights to work.
And when the power came back on, it came back on unevenly..you drove down Tiltree and one side of the street was powered up, the other side dark, except for one house. That one had a huge, fat extension cord running to the house across the street from it.
It was so HOT and HUMID for those ten days, and I remember I think it was a Friday that the power came back on in the morning--cause my alarm clock went off.

Doug, you just made me feel very, very old. I guess you indeed were a baby since it was so long ago. I lived in a bottom floor apartment and my sister lived in an apartment complex down the street on the second floor, so I decided to go to her apartment. It was my first hurricane that I remember (having lived in NY/NJ area most of my life), and it was scary, I could see the windows bending in (and of course the 20-something-year-old idiot that I was stood in front of them to watch the storm). The complex got a little flooding (we were in the Bear Creek area), but I think we were one of the few people who didn't lose power and if we did it wasn't for a long time. I still have newspaper clippings from it and the damage. We fared better than most.

Wow.....no sooner do I post this blog and find that by nightfall.....Fox is all about Alicia. She was my fave storm...I didnt have to go to work for 4 days.........

BessieLou,
I love the fact that you were asking about Alicia! I didn't live here at the time, but I remember it very well and in fact I remember how I was kind of glad that I wasn't in Houston at the time. I'm also glad that you were able to see Mike and me talk about it on the news. Thanks for watching...tonight we'll be talking about extreme East Texas!