DAD AND HURRICANE CAROL

 ((Originally posted 31Aug 2016))

Today is the 63rd anniversary of Hurricane Carol, a Category 3 hurricane that hit New England
on 31 Aug 1954. Of the three hurricanes that I remember from being a kid, it's this one I remember the best.

When  Hurricane Carol hit New England  we were living at 37 Beach St in Malden and the nearby Linden Creek overflowed and flooded the street. My Dad was working in Boston and made it home by driving through the water in his tsn Pontiac right behind someone driving a motorboat. I can remember Vincent Corielli, our next door neighbors' oldest son yelling “Here comes Mr West in his submarine!” That was the same storm where the cellar flooded and mice were floating around on top of cardboard down there. That startled my Aunt Emily until Dad went down and stood on the cellar stairs and calmly sank the mice as they floated by him. (I heard about that from my Mom.)

The other two hurricanes I remember from back then were Flossy and Hazel. Hazel came a few
months after Carol, in October 1954 but wasn't as bad (in Malden at least) and Flossy was two years later in 1956. I think we were living in Dorchester by then. The main reason I remember Hurricanes Hazel and Flossy is because those were the names of two of my Dad's sisters, although we spelled it Flossie.

 I’m not going to claim that we had bigger, badder storms when I was growing up in the 1950's but we did have more hurricanes hit New England back then!