HURRICANE BREAD

It's the staff of life!

If there is one thing you can rely on in the Southern US, it's that, at the first warning that a hurricane is headed in our direction, everyone will immediately go to grocery stores and buy bread .

That means buying LOTS of bread! Enough bread to last for two weeks. Or even longer. And cakes, too. Maybe even doughnuts.

We have been through this before and we expect that there will be wind and water damage; that there will be trees down, flooded areas, and a loss of electricity that may last a day or a week or even more. That means cooking will be difficult, so we expect to be eating sandwiches. Having enough bread on hand is a major comfort item.

The official warning that Hurricane Florence should arrive Friday afternoon came late Tuesday afternoon. We had plenty of time and we made our trip after 12:30 PM on Wednesday to top off the car with petrol and then stopped at a new Kroger's grocery store. The parking lot was filled with shoppers. Surprise, surprise!

There was NO BREAD left! The shelves were fully stocked at six AM and now it's one PM. Not a loaf of bread! Everything had been sold! There is no bread shortage; just a surge in buying. Southerners know better that wait when it comes to having bread on hand. Many seem to think that having enough bread on hand provides a talisman to ward off the effects of strong wind and hard rain. In many ways, it does.

Fortunately, we already have enough on hand and got the other things we went for.

As I was leaving the parking lot, two bread delivery trucks were driving up to the back delivery dock.

^{Image by @willymac}

It was a beautiful day. No wind, low humidity, a beautiful sky, and no threat of a monster off the coast over the Atlantic, sucking up water and heat energy from the Gulf Stream.

^{Image by @willymac}

Two days later, on Friday, sunrise on the eastern horizon was more foreboding. The dark mass of clouds to the southeast told of the hurricane's presence off the shore of North Carolina; still over the ocean but hesitant to come ashore as if still deciding where to drop the tens of thousands of tons of water it had collected.

^{Image by @willymac}

The water will cause the most damage as it floods farms, pastures and forests, fills rivers and streams, inundates towns, rises into homes and businesses and ultimately does billions and billions of dollars of damage.

The winds will push trees out of their path. People will die.

Unknown thousands of small animals will die. For them, there is no refuge from the flooded earth.

Now, all we can do is to wait.

At least we have our talisman for protection.

_{Bread image from Pixabay}

finis