Dr. Leah Strong, the head of the American Studies Department at Wesleyan in the late 1970s (and my advisor) introduced me to the ideas of popular culture and folklore and taught me that the stories my family told, the songs my family sang, the language used by my family – strong and wise and unaffected country people – were things to be valued and preserved.  

It is because of Dr. Strong that my ear is trained to the cadence and melody of Southern voices, alerted to the layered meanings of colloquialisms, tender to the weightiness of words like “home” and “place.”

It is because of Dr. Strong that I was able to begin formulating what I sometimes call my motto, sometimes my thesis, always my one sure thing: It’s all one big story.

I owe her a lot.

The recent barrage of weather watches and warnings brought on by our unusual winter reminded me of a story she used to tell about being prepared:  Dr. Strong’s elderly mother, along with her dachshund Wilhelm and an unnamed tropical bird, lived with her.  Every summer they evacuated Macon for Sarasota where Dr. Strong volunteered with the Coast Guard Auxiliary.  One summer, in anticipation of hurricane season, the Coast Guard instructed all its personnel, including the Auxiliary, to prepare evacuation plans.

Dr. Strong took her responsibility to the Coast Guard very seriously, but she also took very seriously her independence and she did not always appreciate being told what to do.  She went home that afternoon and informed her mother of the Coast Guard’s instructions and the fact that she had already developed the plan by which they would remove themselves from harm’s way in the event of a hurricane: “You get the bird; I get the dog; we run like hell.”

That was is it.  The entire plan in twelve words.

That story has been told and re-told by Wesleyan students for over 50 years.  The telling is usually accompanied by the orator’s clenching her teeth and squinting her eyes in an attempt to mimic Dr. Strong and thereby emphasize the sincerity and lack of humor with which the original story was told.  

Like her hero Mark Twain, Dr. Strong knew how to tell a story.  She knew how to capture an audience and how to leave that audience not just entertained, but enamored and – more importantly - enlightened.

As the notifications regarding our recent weather kept popping up on my phone and spouting out from Alexa, I ran through my plan: Make sure the car has gas; drip the pipes; bring in dog food for two or three days; make sure all the chargeable stuff is charged.  Every hour or so I thought of something else.  Fill the bird feeders, locate the candles.

And then I found myself thinking about Dr. Strong.  To be honest, her bad weather plan was probably a little simplistic and most likely not at all feasible.  Even she, I think, would admit that is always prudent to keep a supply of batteries and a couple of jugs of water on hand and to identify ahead of time which of your interior rooms provides the best shelter.  

Still, I have faced enough storms – the kind reported by the Weather Channel and the kind detected by my own intuition – to know that not every threat, not every disaster, not every peril can be averted by preparedness.  Sometimes you just have to be able to grab what you love and run like hell.