Essays of E. B. White by E. B. White Read Free Book Online Page B

be at 4:23 this afternoon. The barometer now reads 29.88 and falling. A chicken shoot is canceled for tomorrow—the first chicken shoot I had ever heard of. All Rockland stores will close at three o’clock, one of them a store carrying suits with the new novelty weave and novel button and pocket trim. If this thing gets worse, I thought, I’ll have to go outdoors again, even though they tell you not to. I can’t take it in here. At 1:55 P.M., I learned that visiting hours at the Portsmouth Hospital, two hundred miles to the southwest of me, had been canceled, and, having no friend there, I did not know whether to be glad about this or sorry.
    The time is now two o’clock. Barometer 29.50, falling. Wind ESE, rising. It seems like a sensible moment to do the afternoon chores—get them over with while the going is good. So I leave the radio for a spell and visit the barn, my peaceable kingdom, where not a nematode stirs.
    When I resumed my vigil, I discovered to my great surprise that Rockland, which is quite nearby, had dropped Edna for the time being and taken up American League baseball. A Red Sox-Indians game was on, with the outfield (I never learned which outfield) playing it straight-away. My wife, who despises the American League, was listening on her set, and dialing erratically. I heard a myna bird being introduced, but the bird failed to respond to the introduction. Then someone gave the rules of a limerick contest. I was to supply the missing line for the following limerick:
    I knew a young lady named Joan
    Who wanted a car of her own.
    She was a sharp kid
    So here’s what she did
    . . . . . . . . .
    The line came to me quickly enough: She ordered a Chevy by phone. I was to send this to Box 401 on a postcard, but I didn’t know what city and I wasn’t at all sure that it was a General Motors program—could have been a competitor. The whole thing made no sense anyway, as cars were at that moment being ordered off the roads—even Joan’s car.
    At 2:30, it was announced that school buildings in the town of Newton were open for people who wanted to go to them “for greater personal security or comfort.” Ted Williams, who had been in a slump, singled. WBZ said the Boston police had lost touch with Nantucket, electric power had failed in South Natick, Portland was going to be hit at five o’clock, Wells Beach had been evacuated, a Republican rally for tonight in Augusta had been canceled, the eye of Edna was five miles north of Nantucket, a girl baby had been born, Katharine Cornell had been evacuated by police from her home on Martha’s Vineyard, and all letter carriers had been called back to their stations in Boston on the old sleet-snow-wind theory of mail delivery. I made a trip to the barometer for a routine reading: 29.41, falling.
    â€œThe rain,” said the Mayor of Boston in a hearty voice, “is coming down in sheets.”
    â€œThat gigantic whirlpool of air known as Hurricane Edna,” said Weatherbee, from his South Shore observation point, “is over the town hall of Chatham.” Weatherbee also dropped the news that the eastern end of the Maine coast would probably get winds of hurricane velocity about six hours from now.
    â€œWeatherbee,” said a proud voice from the WBZ Communications Center, “is still batting a thousand.” (At this juncture I would have settled for Ted Williams, who wasn’t doing nearly so well.)
    The rest of the afternoon, and the evening, was a strange nightmare of rising tempest and diminishing returns. The storm grew steadily in force, but in our neck of the woods a characteristic of hurricanes is that they arrive from the southwest, which is where most radio lives, and radio loses interest in Nature just as soon as Nature passes in front of the window and goes off toward the northeast. Weatherbee was right. The storm did strike here about six hours later, with winds up to