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Old Florida
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
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14 Old Florida When the soon-to-be famous hurricane hurried to their neighborhood, I begged them to leave. Rain made a cassoulet of the parking lot; winds juggled giant palms like rolling pins; shy herons took cover beneath awnings and stood like museum guards in doorways— but my parents hunkered down, children under desks in the ’50s, the storm their personal blitz. I cried, I screamed over the phone but they rejected the generator-backed shelter I found, chose canned goods and bunker, until the phone died—and I consigned them to their neighbors, their luck, their blood thinners. Eighty-seven years old, they hid on the ninth floor, elevator out, infrastructure crumbling, but more than death or thirst they feared their daughter with her talk of evacuation. Leaving home, even for natural disaster, made them refugees, registrants in a vast and subtly documented conspiracy to remove them from their apartment to assisted living. Neighbors found them sweating in their foxhole, ferried batteries, salami, and ice, 15 and when the power came back, they phoned to report that hardship brought out the kindness in people, wasn’t it fortunate they stayed in their home? And where was my faith in human goodness? ...