Talk About The Wind

What do you think about the wind? Not the gentle breeze that cools your warm summer afternoon, but the wind that blows your hat across the yard if you are not paying attention, the wind that picks up than neatly folded newspaper you left laying on your chair when you went inside for another cup of coffee, only to come back and find it plastered all over the fence on the furthest end of the yard, that same wind that just when you think it is safe takes your skirt up around your head and after fighting to get it back into place you look around to find that your gut feeling was right, the whole world was watching.

Windmill in our front yard

I left South Carolina at the age of eighteen, and throughout my raising the only time I remember the wind being up above a breeze was when we had a storm brewing, anytime the wind was howling we were hunkered down waiting for the storm to blow over, I made my road trip and landed in New Mexico and not knowing any different, here I am pumping gas for my Dad in the middle of 100mph winds, there were rocks blowing completely sideways and I was ducking and bobbing trying to keep myself from being knocked cold by one of these flying projectiles, I yelled to my Dad:

Me: Dad where do we need to go to take cover?

Dad: Take cover why do we need to take cover?

Me: (pointing to the sky) because of this

Dad: (looking up with a blank look on his face) Because of what?

Me: The Wind

Dad: (laughing) Nope everything is OK

Me: What’s Happening?

Dad: The wind is just blowing

OK I may have over exaggerated the wind speed but it was a lot higher than anything I was used to, believe it or not that very same day I saw Golf Ball size hail for the first time and rather than ask questions about it, I just hunkered down inside until it was over and hoped no one noticed because I wasn’t going outside in this stuff.

Over the next thirty years I got somewhat used to the wind blowing, I lost my hat more than once and saw a few skirts blown upwards, although none were mine I am glad to say, I saw a Grain Elevator blown to the ground once and have seen more roof damage due to the wind than any other reason, I saw a storage building move across the yard and a complete children’s swing set moved to the neighbors yard without our assistance. Did this happen all the time? No but just enough to be irritating, they always told me that I would get used to it, but I lived there thirty years and can say that I never did.

When we made the decision to move to Sunny Southern California/ SOCAL we were pretty excited about the opportunity, we had visited more than once and the weather was always nice and the temperature tolerable, meaning that we just knew we would never be cold and we actually said goodbye to the wind when we left New Mexico, adding that this would be one thing we would not miss.

Soon after we got settled in we were sitting on the porch early one morning when the wind gusted up and blew the newspaper across the yard, we looked at each other and Cindy said to her Dad, “what’s going on” he asked “What are you talking about” she pointed and he replied “It’s OK, The wind is just blowing”

Yes SOCAL includes the Santa Ana Winds and living in the San Gorgonio Pass, one of the nation’s deepest mountain passes means we are in a valley, so where does the wind naturally flow, yep you guessed it we are just wishing for some of those calm New Mexico days at times, seriously it’s really nice here, there are just a few days when the breezes are a bit stronger, they say that we will get used to it but we just smile and nod our heads. I asked Cindy today if she thought we would ever live anywhere that the wind didn’t blow, she just smiled and said “Nope I think we are home.”