By Joe Darby
Anybody remember Pogo the Possum?
Old Pogo was the hero of a comic strip by Walk Kelly that ran from 1948 to 1975. He and his friends, including Albert the Alligator and an owl whose name eludes me, lived in the Okeefenokee Swamp and had many an amusing adventure.
Pogo was a down to earth, practical philosopher and a very quotable marsupial. One of his most famous sayings was “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
But he and his buddies were also noted for inventing new words, that often better described the object in question than the original word did. One that I will always remember — and I’m finally getting close to making my point here — was his term for a powerful tropical storm. Pogo called them horriblecains. Now could anyone come up with a better description of those dreaded weather monsters?
Yes, horriblecains have plagued us folk who live near the country’s coast for centuries. Just a year or so after New Orleans was laid out in 1718, a horriblecain tore into the little settlement and blew down all the little wooden shacks that then made up the future great city.
Just this summer alone we Americans have been attacked, or threatened, by a quartet of very unwelcomed intruders. Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria — as nasty a bunch of horriblecains as ever beleaguered our shores.
I have personally been blessed, so far, because I have never suffered a direct loss as a result of a horriblecain. In Betsy, which hit New Orleans on Sept. 9, 1965, I was a brand new reporter with the Times-Picayune and was sent with a photographer to Thibodaux because the predicted track had it headed that way. Sure enough it passed right over downtown Thibodaux and badly damaged the small city’s buildings.
In running to the shelter of City Hall, where we spent the night with local officials, a gust of wind caught my raincoat, which had ballooned out, and actually lifted me a foot or two into the air. I was lucky. The storm’s winds blew the local sheriff into Bayou Lafourche that night, but he was safely rescued.
When I returned to New Orleans, I was eager to check on my apartment and my car, which I’d parked on Esplanade Avenue. A huge tree had fallen just behind my little sports car, a 1959 Sunbeam Alpine, with the branches barely brushing the back bumper. And though my apartment was fine, a building across the way had completely lost a wall. You could look into the structure, which appeared to be a life-sized doll house, with all the furniture in place but the wall missing.
Mary and her first husband were living in Chalmette at the time and she lost her house and everything in it. But that’s another story.
My personal luck was continuing to hold out, as it did for Katrina. Mary and I evacuated to Natchitoches for that killer horriblecain, staying with the late Bobby DeBlieux at his B&B. The only damage to our home was minor roof leaks and a blown-down fence.
But while we were lucky, so many thousands of good people have suffered so greatly from storms and flood over the years. It’s almost enough to make one question the great theme of things, but after a talk with Father Marc from Holy Cross, I feel better.
The only thing we can do is to continue to pray and hope we and our loved ones will escape the wrath of those horriblecains yet to come. Pogo, that perceptive little critter, knew whereof he spoke!
