Derecho Winds Hit Houston

(Survival Became a Dish Best Served Warm)

This tree was taking a well-deserved nap on a neighbor’s house after 100 m.p.h. derecho wind gusts hit parts of Houston —- which, through clever zoning efforts, now stretches past The Woodlands to the Canadian border. A few dozen bounce houses were actually blown into space and shot down over Manitoba, bringing Ontario and Saskatchewan into Houston’s territorial jurisdiction.

Ey?

Okay, let’s get serious. You, not me.

For many Houstonians (and new Canadians), survival, and anything else in the refrigerator, was soon served warm. Very warm. And while I’m not saying Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo’s least favorite furniture salesman planned all of this, it is awfully suspicious that Gallery Furniture’s “Over 100 m.p.h. Windstorm” sales started two days before the actual storm.

Over 1 million people lost power. Most never had any real power, but I digress. It’s lights we are talking about here, people. Politics can wait, at least until the next several paragraphs.

The real catastrophe doesn’t belong to the 99% who are used to getting the short end of the stick. No, the real catastrophe belongs to the people who own the stick. Imagine no longer being able to raise your garage doors or having to deal with automatic sprinklers that were no longer automatic. Trees even blocked roads that could no longer be traversed by the 1 percent’s gardeners and housekeepers.

But the 1% still spread their love. They entertained their neighbors (and anyone else within a 1/2 mile radius) with the concert-level sounds of their generators. There was even charitable outreach: Centerpoint workers were incentivized with cold beverages and sandwiches and given special guidance to the 1%’s own downed power lines.

Based on cold-weather historical precedent, I’m sure some joined Ted Cruz and his family on a specially guided vacation to an undisclosed Mexican location. (It’s rumored —- yes, I started the rumor; so what? —- that vacationers even had time to discuss getting Mexico to build a special Derecho Wall extending 40,000 feet into the atmosphere.)

Houston’s latest bimonthly weather catastrophe at least helped briefly distract us from the “stormy” trials in NY, Netanyahu’s best efforts to wrest the world opprobrium contest from Hamas’s firm grip, and Jose Abreu’s sojourn to Florida to acquire his lost swing.

The 1% and the 99% have now managed to get their power back. I have my doubts about whether Abreu will have similar success. And we can only hope (for Israel’s and our country’s sake) Netanyahu and Trump continue to lose theirs.