As far as I’m concerned, there was only one storm of the century: Gloria, in September 1985.
We were told over and over again by the weathermen and women where, when and how she was going to hit. In 1985, cable television and the Weather Channel were on the rise, and a hurricane with its own theme song provided hours of entertainment.
We were advised to stock up on food, water and sandbags. We were advised to tape the letter X on our windows as a defense against the dark winds.
Gloria was a descendant of a long line of female hurricanes. Blizzards, however, were just blizzards back then: unnamed but still dangerous.
I guess I would say that I’m on a need-to-know basis with weather. I remember Gloria because of her name and because my friend Omar stuck black electric tape to his eyeglasses in the shape of the letter X, as instructed by the weather gurus. He then worked his full shift as a waiter at Slates in Hallowell. He did this out of respect for the storm with the best name of the century.
So when I called Harbor Fish last Thursday to inquire about shipping six hardshell lobsters to the Midwest, I was surprised to hear that there was some “big weather” out there.
Alice, Harbor Fish’s shipping clerk, took my order and then listed the risks. She used the phrase “act of God” several times.
“Big, big weather,” she said. “We’ll ship ’em, but I can’t guarantee they’ll make it.”
If I were senseless enough to risk my money on the chance that six pound-and-a-quarter lobsters could make it halfway across the country in the worst weather of 2016, Alice was willing to help me.
“I can’t guarantee they will fly,” she said. “I can’t guarantee, even if they do fly, that they will make it all the way. And I definitely can’t guarantee that if they do fly and they make it all the way, that they will make it there alive.”
(The last warning is on their website and applies to all weather and shipping conditions. Buyers, beware.)
“I will only call you if it’s bad news,” she concluded.
She called me two times after that: once to tell me that I had given her the wrong shipping address and once to tell me that it was “looking good.”
Alice was my new hero.
The big weather she was referring to and that I was clueless about was, of course, Winter Storm Jonas. Lobsters, apparently, go south before they go anywhere: Portland to Tennessee to Iowa.
Frederick was not buying any of this adventure. He was not paying, and he was not trusting. Unlike me, Frederick tracks the weather every single day. (Why do men care so much about weather? Answer: snowblowers.)
After hearing from Alice and Frederick about the big weather and the risk I was taking and the “no recourse” because of the potential “act of God” threat … it was, in the end, Alice’s supreme customer service that convinced me to place the order.
She cared as much as I did. If her babies were going to fly, she was going to do whatever it took to make sure they arrived on time.
The next day, when I heard that almost every airport in the world was closed, including a few key ones like LaGuardia, JFK, Dulles and O’Hare, I started to accept that my daughter and her five Midwest friends were in for a big disappointment.
For a mother with a hero complex, this was very, very sad news.
The lobsters were scheduled to arrive Saturday before noon. When my phone rang at 10:30 Saturday morning, I was sure that this was the time that Alice would “only call if it was bad news.”
Instead, she said: “I’m calling to let you know they landed in Iowa. They’re on the van and out for delivery. Here’s the tracking number and now I’m going home. It’s dead here.”
“I love you!” I replied and then pulled up the FedEx website to watch my six lobsters make the 30-minute drive to Iowa City.
At 11:49 a.m., a text came through with a photo of a box with the iconic Harbor Fish logo on the side. They had beaten the odds and any act of God. Now, they would meet their maker.
“What a shame,” I thought.
Jolene McGowan lives and works in Portland with her husband, daughter and dog and has no plans to leave, ever. She can be contacted at:
respondtoportcitypost@gmail.com
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