As hurricane names go, Sandy is too soft for a killer storm. It’s a name befitting a light-haired dog, maybe, or a girl cousin.
Yet the superstorm Sandy that has occupied our thoughts and launched our prayers for a week will forever be wrapped in that Teddy bear of a name.
I can empathize a little with the millions along the East Coast who are dealing with the storm’s aftermath. I grew up with a deep fear of flooding.
Throughout my childhood, my family lived in a proverbial “low lying” area, a lower-middle-class neighborhood — aptly named Riverside — in Columbia, Tenn. After any drenching three-day rain, the nearby Duck River was liable to flood, sending a tide of chocolate-colored water coursing through the dales and ditches at the southern end of our block.
We lived only a few hundred yards from the river, and some of our neighbors’ houses flooded again and again. In the 1970s, I remember front yards full of ruined paisley sofas and soggy shag carpets.