The Key West Citizen

AROUND AND ABOUT
(By C. G. FLINT)

Floridians planning a trip North should be careful to avoid the hurricane season, about this time of year. Unaccustomed as many are to the high winds along the North shore and inland it is well to be cautious, for when a Northern hurricane blows it takes in everything, as can be proved by the damage done in the '38 storm.

The bigger the trees, the quicker they were laid low, usually across the ridge-pole of a neighboring house. Barns built shortly after the American Revolution buckled and collapsed and pine groves were levelled like a row of blocks set up in line. Terrified and amazed citizens found shelter and voiced their humiliation that such a wicked hurricane should violate the sacred soil, property and comfort of the New England states. As one indignant onlooker at the havoc wrought remarked, "You expect this kind of thing in Florida, of course, but how could it happen here?"

Obviously, Olympus was napping. Boston papers, too, are puzzled, as one reports, "New England's First and Last Hurricane" and proceeds to explain all about "Why A Hurricane Is King of Storms".

"Hurricanes follow definite paths . . . and only occasionally swing inland to hit either Texas or Florida", remarks one newshound: But, he adds, "It is clear that if it had been blowing 200 miles an hour as in Florida, the damage would have been much greater", Florida is still allowed to be the champion hurricane state by recovering New England. That is an example of Yankee generosity.

One of the great, perhaps greatest, mysteries of life is that "the rain falls on the just and the unjust". We can never say what card Nature is about to play next, but she usually wins over mankind's feeble "hand"

We must be generous and admit that "God's country" is not confined to one state, or group of states, or even one nation.