Opal, O.J., and Me

Opal, O.J., and Me

Hurricane Isaias hitting so close to home reminded me of much more powerful and dangerous storms of the past: think back to Ivan, Frederic, Camille, Andrew, Hugo, and of course Katrina. There have been many others. 

We lost our telephone and internet on Friday night and didn’t get it back until Sunday night – a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. Our electricity was off for around nine hours Friday night and Saturday morning, but considering how many others were dealing with far greater damage and loss, it did not bother us too much.

For those who were around here 31 years ago, we recall a hurricane named Opal.

Opal’s name is remembered in this area for her devastating winds and flooding rains, and the days of lost electricity. Opal hit the first week of October 1995, and although that was long ago I still remember several of the incidents that occurred.

At that time, I was living on Elm Street Road in Troy, Alabama. My roommates at the time were David Lawrence, now owner of Tallassee Super Foods; and two other guys from the band named Jon Haga and Brian Salter. We had several others who hung around there (some who have landed back in Tallassee) but we were the basic three roommates in that house.

Being a grocery man, David kept our house in working order with regard to having enough supplies stocked and organized for such an event. We had the food – but it was an all-electric house, so we would have to use charcoal grills to cook, or go to somebody else’s house who had a gas stove, should worse come to worst. 

For those of us who were there, I will never forget coming home from classes to eat lunch on the day before Opal hit. We all gathered around the television in the kitchen that day – October 3, 1995. We ate silently as the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced – not guilty. After a year of the O.J. Simpson trial dominating the news media, tabloids, radio talk shows, and pre-empting my soap operas, it was finally over.

Meteorologist Rich Thomas was in panic mode as WSFA-TV 12 broke in to NBC News coverage of the conclusion of O.J. Simpson’s trial. Hurricane Opal was still a category 2 ‘cane tearing through the Gulf Coast on its way to south Alabama. Classes were being cancelled everywhere; offices were closing; Rich advised to stay prepared. Local radio station WTBF-AM 970 stopped playing music and began wall-to-wall coverage of the storm. This was the real deal.

So, on October 4, 1995, as Opal brought her path of destruction through my adopted hometown of Troy, Alabama, we hunkered down at Elm Street for – what else? – a hurricane party.

I think most of the music department – the “Sound of the South” band and the Collegiate Singers -- were split between our house and my old residence, the House of Beef over on Three Notch Street. There was a party being hosted over at Three Notch with the five or six guys who were living in that house … on what turned out to be its last night of existence.

Back at Elm Street, the rain was coming down and the winds were raging. Dan Seaborn (later band director at B.B. Comer High School for over 25 years) and I chased our mailbox down the street once it blew off the post. I reattached it while the driving rain nearly blew us away. Back at the house, the party continued on the porch and inside the living room as our guests talked to one another without any electric current to keep lights on. We had a battery-operated radio going, of course, to keep us informed.

Over at Three Notch and the House of Beef, their party was louder than the actual hurricane. Opal may have been knocking at the door but she decided to get their attention another way: by tearing the back rooms of the house off. Thankfully, no one was in there at the time, but for years I heard stories about people who had been standing in the den, only to have it ripped away seconds later by tree limbs and rough winds. Travis Bryant of Tallassee was living at Three Notch by then, and gave us the tour the next day of what used to be a home.

Back at Elm Street, we sustained ourselves with junk food and beverages throughout the night. As day broke, we cleared away the limbs and trash from our vehicles and David drove us around town. The tall Coffee Kettle sign was bent over to the ground. The University quadrangle had lost all its trees. There was debris everywhere – roofs, siding, broken glass, pieces of buildings, you name it. Everything was closed, and people wandered aimlessly around town, staggering with disbelief at what had happened. I had never seen anything like it, and we hadn’t even been in the worst part of the storm.

Dr. Johnny Long called me – I was Band Captain at the time – and asked that we gather some helpers to come clean up his yard. When we arrived at his house, a tree had fallen beside his glass-enclosed sun porch. It was maybe, at most, one inch from the corner of that room. As then-assistant band director Ralph Ford said, “this man must be living right!”

Another byproduct of that crazy 24 hours in which O.J. was set free and Opal was cut loose: the Three Notch house is gone, and so is the Elm Street house. But the mailbox on its post remains – a reminder that, 31 years ago, we all sat through some pretty intense times together.

Michael Bird is an assistant professor of music at Faulkner University.