Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

We are Jemima and Easter Yeggs.  Lieutenant Yeggs wants his son to write these reports to keep in touch when we are out having our adventures, and Rev C.S.L., my Dad, doesn’t mind an update either.

To set the record straight, my first report…  Wait a minute!  Easter is supposed to right these things!

Oh, wait a minute.  My Dad and Easy’s Dad both said I did a better job…

Okay, the first report that I made was one from the double honeymoon that Easy and I had with the mayor and Cassie.  Easy had made the reports before then.

Then a recent report was when Joseline and Kevin went on an impromptu honeymoon in the Turtle.

This story is nothing like those at all.  We had delayed our Turtle trek for the summer in order for the brides and grooms to prepare for the wedding.  That left a little over a month to get footage into the Storm Chasing Channel and get data to the university.  A storm was in the Caribbean.  The honeymooners were flown to Houston.  It was not like it was a paid vacation trip.  Amy G. Dala had the pilots continue on to some place south of there to intercept a package bound for the USA.  The ship was blocked at the Panama Canal, bottlenecks for one reason or another and then the potential storm shut down everything.  Amy wanted her stuff off the ship and in the USA pronto.  The shipping company had already approved the change, making arrangements for the pilots to obtain the sizeable package.

So, this is not another honeymooner story in a long line of honeymooner stories.  It is a full test of the seven-passenger capability of the Turtle, and two sets of newlyweds would be working for the next six weeks, roughly.  We had to be back in Tracy in time for Michael to start school.  The honeymooners will have a full two nights in a Houston Honeymoon suite, each their own, so they can get all that out of their system.

Then, we go to work, but until then, Easy, Michael and I packed the Turtle, and we were on our way, driving the Turtle to Houston to pick up the rest of the team.  Michael sat in his new mother’s seat to look at the tracking of the storm and the radar for the route we were to take.  I had programmed the route into the computer ahead of time, so he could give us updates, making him feel like a full member of the team.

Of course, no one was a full member of the team until Home Wrecker had given them a code name.  The only thing we heard about her husband was when he was a “two-bit boyfriend,” but that might not work now that they are married.  Dr. Quinn ummm, I mean, Casey… sorry, I have to get used to the new name.  Michael is now Michael Rowe Casey, but I am going to have to refer to her as Dr. Ellie, since Dr. Ben also has the same last name.  Anyway, Dr. Ellie has been mute on code names.

As we started down the road, I asked Michael, “Michael, where are we going?”

Michael shrugged, “To pick up my Mom and Dad.”

I asked again, “You are in the command chair.  Dr. Kildare said you had to be involved in some way.  I did not ask what we were going to do.  I asked where are we going?  You have live navigation on the computer in front of you.”

Michael said, “You are not my Mom.  You are not even a Mom.  Are you some kind of teacher?”

I calmly said, “Michael, on technicalities, you are wrong on both statements and by assigned duties, yes, I am supposed to teach you between here and where we are going.  Learn to read the navigation screen.  I may ask what direction are we going, or how far to the destination in miles or in estimated time.  Once you have all the navigational information down, we will go onto other things.  Is that clear, Michael?”

Michael grumbled, “Yes, ma’am, but how are you my Mom on a technicality?  And how are you a Mom?”

I again calmly answered, but it was getting tough, “Your Mom and Dad gave us full parental control of you for this trip, and since she is the primary instructor on the expedition, she thought teaching you the computer programs that we use would be better than having you mindlessly play games.  Besides, there are not that many games on her computer.  She wants it to be strictly work-related activities.  As for me being a Mom, the baby inside me is about the size of a fig, but its internal organs are developed and we’ve already heard the heartbeat.  The baby has fingers and toes and if we had an ultrasound, we might know what the gender is.  So, yeah, the baby is not outside me, but I have to be a good Mom to make sure the baby is healthy when the birth date happens.  Okay, Mr. Inquisitive?”

Michael groaned, “This is my summer vacation.  I’m a kid!  I passed all my classes, but now I’m in summer school.  Can anyone save me from this schoolhouse?”

Easy answered, “We are presently driving at interstate speeds.  It would not be a good time to plan an escape.  But we are all learning.  When you quit learning, you die.  When you write about what you did during your vacation, I am sure you will be the only storm chaser in Moon Maid Middle School.  Stinker and I are both getting college credits for this trip.  Believe me.  Some of it will be fun, but you have the radar.  We do not.  If a bad storm is about to hit us, you need to know how to take the information from the radar screen and estimate how quickly we will be able to reach the storm using the navigation screen.  We do not anticipate a storm, but we might get rain.  Besides, you will also be asked where the nearest burger joint is when we get hungry.  Now, are you a little more motivated?”

Michael sounded half asleep, “Yeah, but I’m not hungry yet.”

I asked, “So, where are we going?”

Michael replied, “Houston, Texas, near the airport, but why are we not staying in the same hotel with the people we are picking up?”

I snickered, “They are honeymooning until tomorrow.  They are in the fancy hotel thanks to a wedding present from a lady that has a lot of frequent travel points.  We are staying in a modest, but nice, hotel that is in the university’s budget.”  Michael only groaned an “oh.”

Since Michael had no direct view out the left side of the Turtle due to the computer screens, I challenged Michael to an alphabet game.  I took road signs, and he took billboards and advertisements.  We limited one letter per sign.  That way I could not jump ahead with a sign that said, “Bridge ices before roadway.” That one sign has “A” to “G.”  But there were a lot of bridges.  I got stuck on “J” for a long time, and he won.  He saw a Quality Inn sign just in time for the “Q” and we were headed for Texas.  My advantage of having an “Exit” sign was nullified by advertisements about restaurants, hotels, and attractions further down the road in Texas, of course, “at exit” such and such.

And Michael had no problem telling where the next Whataburger was, once he got hungry.  And What a Burger!  That boy could eat.  I noticed that Dr. Ellie did not give us extra cash to pay for a hungry almost teenager.  Sure, we were on an expense account, but our cash was fading, and we had no credit card yet.

We got to our hotel, and we rented the suite with a separate bedroom.  Some hotels have a “suite” room that has a half wall between what they jokingly call the living room and the bedroom.  It’s really a two-bed bedroom with a fold out sofa.  But in this hotel, they had one room that had a full master bedroom with bath with a door separating that room from a suite-like hotel room.  Thus, we took the bedroom and let Michael have the rest of the hotel room.  He watched television a little later than he should have, but he quickly went to sleep.  We stripped the bed the next morning.  We checked in, explaining that Easy and I would go to a different room and Michael’s parents would be arriving about midday.  They said if the cleaning staff saw a stripped bed, they would put clean sheets on the bed.  The suite was pricey, but it was less than two separate hotel rooms, and we could keep an eye on Michael easier.  He was almost a teenager, but he had lost his parents just a couple of months ago, and now his adoptive mother (still awaiting some signatures on the paperwork) is not with him.  He stayed with us in our apartment the night before and now he is at the hotel.

Before this trip, Michael finished seventh grade at Lily the Pink.  With the trauma of losing both parents, they wanted Joseph nearby.  When he worked as a chaplain for disaster relief, he did a lot of grief counseling.  They spent some time at Moon Maid Middle School, and they even had a few children visit Lily the Pink, the children that had stayed there the year before who would be in Michael’s grade.  Pink Lady wanted his transition to be a little less traumatic and Dr. Ellie agreed.

On the storm front, the storm was pounding the Yucatan peninsula, and it was not moving for the moment.  It was losing steam, but there was a lot of hot water in the Gulf.

After everyone was in their proper hotel rooms the next day, the two professors started looking at options.

Easy and I caught up with Joseph and Mary.  We did not ask if the “virgin” thing was still in effect; we could tell it was not from the look on their faces.  Easy and I both noted that we had never seen Mary with tousled hair before.  She stuck her tongue out at us.

When the Casey family joined us in the breakfast area, although it was near dinner time, we suggested a restaurant we heard great things about, and it fit a celebratory theme.  Dr. Ellie, not yet tenured as Ben Casey was, but still the head of Storm Chasing, said that they had decided to leave Michael and me behind while they would chase some tornadoes for another two days.  So, they took our room and we remained with Michael.  Easy would wake me before dawn to say goodbye.  Their reasoning was that they would be covering a lot of miles, and the conditions might get rough.  My pregnancy was near the end of the first trimester, but they wanted to play it safe.  I was the test case in case Home Wrecker or B.B. got in the family way.  I was instructed to set up some cameras and record Michael and me in a hotel room, waiting for our loved ones to return.  Add some suspense to the reality show.  They would, of course, record everything on their journey.

I was bummed.  Yes, I was about at the worst of the morning sickness, but it was over the hump and getting better.  But this change in the team also put me with an almost teenager that I had a rocky start with.

About mid-morning, the clouds moved in and the wind increased.  It was not the storm but the atmosphere being moved out of the way as the storm approached.  It was this disturbance that would get the necessary shear north of Houston to produce something worth chasing.

Michael spent half his day looking at the clouds rolling by.  I had a couple of cameras trying to get something useful, but I was bored.  I wanted to be with my husband.

When Michael was not at the window, he was on the computer.  He kept flipping between the hurricane tracker and the radar for the storms that the Turtle was chasing.  And then he asked in a pathetic weak voice, “Stinker, can you hold me?”

I thought, “Hopefully this is progress.”  I said, “Sure.”  He walked over and sat on my lap.  He was small for a twelve-year-old and to think that in a couple of weeks he’d be thirteen.

The back of his head rubbed across my chest a few times.  He seemed to be trying to find a comfortable place to bury his face before the tears started.

Then he said, “Dr. Quinn’s boobs are softer than yours.”

I screamed, “What!?!  Off! Off! Off!” And I pushed him onto the floor with a thud.

He asked, “What was that all about?”

I was panting from what I felt was an assault.  “You do not say such things!  You do not try to get intimate with a pregnant woman!  That was wrong on so many levels, young man.  I think you may need to go to bed early.  Alone!!”

He looked confused more than repentant on one hand or macho on the other.  “I just didn’t know why your body feels different.  I meant no offense.”

I was still trying to catch my breath. “Well, we are going to have to set some boundaries.  Did you have boundaries with your parents?”

He shrugged, “They said not to leave the ranch and to always have clothes on.  But the ranch was huge.”

I asked, “Why did you leave the ranch?  Montana is beautiful.  You say the ranch was huge.”

He shrugged again, “Mom and Dad did not own it.  We lived in a commune.  The owner let us set up a ranch on his property, but he died.”

I asked, “You were in a commune?  Like Hippies?”  He nodded.  “Okay, so tell me about the Hippies that made up this commune.”

He came over and sat at the foot of the bed.  “Not much to tell really.  I was all that was left of the third generation.  My grandparents and three other couples all piled into a van.  They tried to avoid their past.  If it were not for a private detective that was really good at his job, I would be in Montana somewhere.  But the four couples in the old van were friends or became friends as they travelled together.  The guy that owned the van and his wife started picking up others that wanted a life far away from the nine to five, the cultural revolution.  One couple wanted to weave rugs.  Another couple wanted to start a winery.  And the third couple wanted to raise goats and make goat cheese.”

Michael continued, “This rancher in the middle of the Montana foothills allowed them to stay at his place.  Before they got there, they kept getting kicked out here or the sheriff would harass them there.  The rancher had just sold his cattle so he could have enough to move into a nursing home when the time came and still have the deed to the ranch.  None of his children or grandchildren wanted to run the ranch, but he wanted to still own something.  He let the eight of them stay rent free for five years, and then just a percentage after that.  And half of those eight were my grandparents.  The weavers quit when they found no way to market their rugs.  They both got day jobs in town and eventually moved there, making rugs on the weekend and going to flea markets.  The guy that owned the van had no skills or knowledge other than fixing things.  He kept the rancher’s equipment running.  He built three houses, one for each potential family.  He worked for the other two families, and he drove into town for stuff.  The goat population started to grow.  The vineyard was going to take a while to mature.  They lived off selling cheese until the end of the five years.  It took that long for the vineyard to produce something that might make wine.  The rancher was fine with that.  A couple of the wives took care of the rancher.  He felt safe there, so he never went to the nursing home.  There was a big enough garden to grow a lot of vegetables.  They sold the vegetables that we did not eat, and they split the proceeds with the rancher, but he had a ton of money from the sale of his cattle.  But since the money was not coming in fast enough, the van owner moved into town and went to work for a repair shop.  He still had his wife drive out to the ranch to help take care of the rancher and drive anyone into town that needed to go, but now they had three houses and only two families.  But the Hancock family made cheese and the Rowe family grew grapes and finally some really good wine, or so my folks said.  And that’s about all that happened except the Rowe couple had my Dad and the Hancock family had my Mom.  They had a bus that picked them up for school, but they were the only two children for miles and they were a few months apart in age, my Dad a couple of months older than Mom.”

I asked, “Did they get married because they were best friends and no one else around?”

Michael nodded, “But it was kind of arranged.  The four parents moved them into the third house for them to learn how to live together.  They did not sleep together until my dad finally noticed that my Mom was the prettiest thing he ever saw.  He was a late bloomer.  They had been cooking food, cleaning house, all that stuff as best friends, and then suddenly, they weren’t friends anymore.  They were man and wife.”

I asked, “We have a couple like that at Lily the Pink.  Did they ever make it official?”

Michael nodded, “Like I said.  With a beautiful young girl in the house all the time, he was sixteen before he noticed.  I doubt if my grandparents ever were married, but they all piled into the van and got my parents married with the justice of the peace.  And then, it took a couple of years before Mom got pregnant with me.  I’ve been making cheese since I was eight.  The rancher died before I was born and his family wanted us off the property.  The town had grown, and they wanted to subdivide the ranch into a bedroom community and a small commercial district, but the rancher said we could stay in his will.  But that only applied to my grandparents.  My Mom’s mother died about a year ago.  The family gave us a year to move since they had already built a few new houses and started building roads through the property, but the private detective found the weaver at a bar in town, and he led the guy to my folks.  He was looking for my Mom’s mother, and Mom was just as good.  Her family all died off.  Car wrecks, a couple of folks getting killed in Vietnam (the reason my Grandma ran off), and then the old folks dying.  The old homestead was all hers, the only one left.  We didn’t really have a choice.  We had to move, and now my folks are gone.”

Then he looked at me and the tears were flowing.  “They didn’t take us with them because it wasn’t safe.  Am I going to be an orphan all over again?”

It was not a ruse to rub against my body.  He was afraid for the safety of the Turtle Team.  We agreed to stand and hug.  I reassured him that the best driver in the business was Easy, and he was going to be the best meteorologist too.  He knew how to keep the others safe.  Otherwise, I would be scared too.  But saying that did not keep me from crying.

We got a call from Easy about bedtime.  They had chased a few storms, getting close to a couple of them.  But they were going to cut that short.  The hurricane was moving past the Yucatan peninsula.  We would need to change hotels soon.  They would be back the next afternoon.

Easy and I had never seen Dr. Ellie so confused when she arrived.  She could not make up her mind as to where we should move.  She had already called a few hotels, but she had no idea where the storm was going.  If she guessed wrong, we would miss the storm.  If we risked a hotel too close to the beach, many had no elevated parking garage.  This was not the time to test the water-proofing measures of the Turtle.  The elevated parking garage was also one of the best places to gather data.

A good storm chaser had to be decisive based on the data at hand, but Dr. Ellie had Dr. Ben to help, and they were married.  He preferred her making the decision.  But then, I was pregnant, and she had Michael to think about.  Losing his parents in a flood could lead to even greater trauma for Michael if the storm rapidly intensified.

After a lot of prayer and tears, she gathered everyone in the lobby.  We had already checked out.

Dr. Ellie said, “We are going to Galveston.  If the storm misses us to the south and west, we will still get wind and rain.  If the storm hits closer, we will be on the strongest side for storm surge.  If the storm eye passes over us, we might get some great data and photos.  And if the storm is on the east of Galveston, we still get data.  I have called a hotel that has rooms facing the beach with accessible balconies.  The parking lot is elevated.  Let’s roll!”

And for the first time, we all piled into the Turtle with full gear.  Easy and I were up front as usual.  The command chairs were taken by the two professors.  The back row, with two new seats, were Michael, then Joseph, and then B.B. on the seat on the passenger side since we left the video camera monitor controls at that location.  She could control what we were seeing and adjust the camera with the cameras that had swivel capability.  I still had control of the forward cameras.  Michael and Joseph were in the observation seats.  They had a screen with four views.  One was my forward camera.  One was the radar.  One was the navigation screen. And the last screen was whatever Dr. Ellie wanted the observers to see.  Joseph had to take notes and Michael was encouraged to do so.

But this was a simple drive through Houston, Texas, as if any drive through Houston, Texas was simple.

After we unpacked and settled into our rooms, Dr. Ellie knocked on our door.  Home Wrecker said, “Thank you for taking care of Michael for a couple of days and on the way down.  We’ll have to compare notes since he admitted that the two of you talked a lot.  He is about to hit the teenaged years, but I do not think the hormones are too horrible yet.  But there will come a day soon when he just quits talking.  But I want to apologize for my brain freezing.  I was thinking like a mom and a wife for the first time.  Please, Stinker, you have no problem saying what needs to be said.  If I freeze again, I need someone to think for me.  The safety of the team was always more important, but I froze.  And oh, I forgot, here is twenty bucks for Michael’s meals.  When he gets hungry, he can eat.  We will worry about the expense report when we get home, but you may need the cash now.  I have plenty.  Galveston is an island.  That is one of the reasons I wanted to avoid it.  We may be stranded there for a while and without electricity, no ATMs.  Don’t worry.  I have enough to get us home and once we reach the mainland, we should find business as usual rather quickly.”

We will see how things go on whether Dr. Ellie made the right decision.  Hurricanes are not chased.  You take your best guess and hope the storm does not do something weird.  We’ll keep in touch and remember that the two professors have Satellite phones if other means of communication is lost.  You have their numbers, but only for emergencies.  We might be on the island for the summer, or we might be chasing tornadoes closer to home.  We will write again in a couple of weeks if we have power and an internet connection.

Credits

I have driven into, out of, and through Houston, Texas over several decades.  It is not “simple” at any point, except maybe two in the morning, but I have not tried it then.  Midnight was rather busy.

And one of our family traditions was to eat at Whataburger each time we visited my wife’s family in Texas, but the last time we were all together was for my wife’s youngest brother’s funeral.  We were so busy that we did not visit Whataburger.  As we passed one on the access road next to the interstate, my son said goodbye to the restaurant that had not yet opened for business.  He said we might never see one of those restaurants again.  Forty-year-old guys can get maudlin, on occasion.  His mother died less than two years later.