WindWIND! Yes, Wind is the title of my column, and I’ll be honest; I’m not a fan of any kind of strong wind, and I have good reasons to dislike wind. I’m not talking about a soft breeze, but a wind that is strong enough to be irritating or dangerous. Believe it or not, one of the reasons Vertis and I moved back to Arkansas from Corpus Christi, Texas was because of the wind. When we lived in Portland, a bedroom community of Corpus Christi, a 25 mile-per-hour wind off the Gulf was just normal, and every woman wore a chiffon scarf to cover her hair when she was out on the street. Yes, that wet wind off-the Gulf could, in seconds, could whip a woman’s hair into a mess. Corpus Christi has a Bayfront, which is near sea level and a bluff where the business section is located. One night we were standing on the bluff to watch the Buccaneer Days Parade, when the first band sounded from the Bayfront, the color guard stepped out, and they marched toward the bluff with the Texas and U. S. flags flapping in the wind. However, as they marched up the bluff into the stronger wind, they began to struggle just hold the flags upright, and as they passed us they lost the battle. The wind had whipped them, and they furled the flags. No, we weren’t surprised, nor was anyone else who lived in south Texas. We moved to south Texas right out of college, and we had just settled in when the TVs and radios blared a hurricane warning. Hurricane Carla was bearing down on south Texas, and we headed for cover. However, the hurricane took a jog north and nailed Victoria, Texas, and we just got +40 MPH wind and rain. Over the next twelve years that we lived in south Texas, we were sideswiped a couple of time and then with Celia, we got hammered with a “put the kids in the bathtub, drape a blanket over them, and then huddle on the floor as both neighbor houses on either side of us lost a complete roof.” Yes, that bit of wind roared out of the Gulf from a hurricane that was barely a category one storm, from 75 miles offshore, into a category four with sustained winds of 150 miles an hour with gusts recorded at 180 miles per hour, and we road it out. One of my favorite movies is Fargo. I think there is only a barbwire fence between Fargo, North Dakota and the North Pole. The line I remember comes from the lady sheriff, who has just solved a gruesome murder, “How could someone do such a terrible thing on a nice day as this?” She was driving her sheriff’s car along a snow packed road with the wind howling. I’ve heard preachers’ rail that sinners would be sent to a burning hell, but while that sounds bad, I would almost rather be sent to a hot hell than to a frigid Fargo. I think my dislike for a cold wind started when I was the Norphlet Paperboy. I was skinny as a rail, and on those cold January morning, I couldn’t put on enough clothes to keep warm. I have my own built-in “It feels as if.” Yes, when it’s below 30, I don’t care if the weatherman tells me it feels as if it’s, 26 degrees. My feels like, says it feels as if it is 0. Yes, a cold wind is bad, but it’s nothing like a hot, dusty wind full of sand. I’m talking about a sandstorm, and I went through three of them while I was in Libya. The first one came straight out of the desert and descended on Benghazi like a cloak of hot, sandy doom. We were alerted by a fellow geologist to get ready for the sandstorm, which the Libyans called a giblie. I really didn’t think a 35 to 40 mile an hour wind from the desert would be a big problem, since we were used to winds of that velocity from living in south Texas, but I found out quickly, a 35 mile per hour wind blowing off the Gulf of Mexico is a minor irritant compared to a 35 mile per hour wind blowing from a barren, sandy desert. However, we took our friend’s word for it, and tried to do everything he said to get ready for the giblie. Our house had windows with shutters, which I thought would be enough, but our friend told us to tape them where nothing could get in. “Richard,” he said, “the dust and sand from the giblie will fill your house, if you don’t seal off every crack.” Well, I didn’t believe him, but we taped off all our doors and windows and just waited for the giblie to arrive, and it was right on time. It was a very strong wind carrying a lot of dust and sand, and we didn’t have any problems at first, but after a couple of hours, I noticed our house was beginning to be filled with dust, and after another couple of hours, it was bad enough to try and do something. I rechecked all the windows and doors, and I couldn’t find any opening that would let the dust in, but it was really getting bad. Finally, I came up with a plan: we would close off our bedroom, seal the bedroom door shut, put up our standup Sears fan, and put a wet towel in front of it. Then we would lie on the bed breathing through a wet washcloth. As we lay there, Vertis asked, “How long is this giblie going to last?” I remembered the day before when I was talking to Mohammad, our night watchman, gardener, and yardman about how long a giblie lasts. “Vertis, Mohammad said they always last an odd number of days, like one, three, or five. He said there was one, which lasted eleven days.” “Oh, my God!” Vertis yelled. Well, we were lucky, because that night the giblie passed over Benghazi, and the next morning the sun was out, and we were faced with the dirtiest house you can imagine. I had two more giblie experiences while working in the desert. Trying to fly down to a rig near the Algerian border into a big giblie was nearly the last flight of my life, and then I drove south from Benghazi to see the Lady Be Good, the American plane that had it navigation system knocked out while bombing Italy in World War II, got off course, and landed in the central desert. Coming back, I encountered a giblie and was lost for 14 hours. Yep, my wind experiences are all bad, and with that list you can’t blame me for not liking the wind. Cemetery work update: Sunday the 13th, conditions: 40 degrees and rain: Four cold and wet men, Denny Palmer, Larry Post, Rob Reynolds, and Richard Mason hit the cemetery with clippers, cutters, and a battery powered chain saw. They did an amazing amount of work to preserve a bit of Union County history.