lucky that my home was not damaged. I did lose several large trees.
I lived in Florida from 1969 into 2005 & saw a lot of tornadoes & hurricanes none of which scared
me too badly as they never got too close to Brandon where I lived. The 2004 hurricane season
changed all that, scared the bejeebers out of me, & was a defining reason in regards to why I
moved back to Ohio. There were 4 major storms from 08/24 through 09/28. Two caused a lot of
damage in my area but I was extremely lucky & only lost trees. Francis came through, 08/24-09/08,
& took down a few trees. Jeanne, 09/13-09/28, took down even more trees. I did all the clean-up
myself. I wore out 2 chainsaw chains to say nothing of how worn out I was after several days of hard
work.
The 1st 6 pics are of damage caused by Hurricane Francis. The next 5 are from Hurricane Jeanne.
The next 8 are of the clean-up process. The 1st pic of Winston was after Francis. He wore himself
out chasing grey squirrels through the debris. The 2nd is after Jeanne & he seemed disappointed that
there were no squirrels around. The best thing to come from the storms is a custom turkey call made
for me, by Irving Whitt, from one of the trees that were blown down on 08/26. All the trees I lost were
chinaberry trees. This may be 1 of the only, if not the only, calls made from chinaberry wood. It is an
awesome sounding call which went to the woods once, brought a nice gobbler to the gun, & was then
retired to my call cabinet. The call has too much meaning to run the risk of breaking or losing it.
Hurricane Francis - 08/24/2004-09/08/2004
Hurricane Jeanne, 09/13/2004-09/28/2004
