Looking for plywood to board up windows on the last day before IKE makes landfall is better than not looking at all, right? The morning before IKE made landfall in Galveston that's exactly what my husband did. He took a trip to Home Depot. Did he find plywood? Actually, he did! Only, it wasn't the cheaper grade plywood that most people were fortunate enough to purchase more ahead of time. I was not there with him, but I can guess that buying plywood to board up the windows was somewhat similar to buying a cabbage patch doll for some little girl, way back when they first were such a big hit. My husband wasn't even about to look for plywood in the typical section that most people were looking. Instead of looking down the cheaper grade plywood aisle, my husband knew better. He skipped all that ruckus and headed toward furniture grade wood. That's right, he placed birch on his cart. Not more than a minute later (according to his report), he headed toward checkout.
Others were eyeing his wood, and one of them said "He just came from that direction".
According to my husband, a big mob headed toward the area he'd just come from.
About $400 later, he was back at the house. The table saw and the nail gun were out and making noises, and he was getting my help in moving a ladder to different windows that needed covered. The wind started to pick up a little, but it was just a pleasant change from the typical early September temperatures that we're so used to here in Houston. The heavier wind, that started picking up quite a bit around 9 or 10 pm, was even still just as delightful. My husband's back started hurting around 4 in the afternoon. So we managed to get the entire front and sides of our house covered, but we left the back part of our house exposed. The wind was supposed to head toward the front of our house, not the back of it.
We blew up the air mattress, and two little girls were tucked into bed at the foot of our bed. We stayed up to watch the news until about 12 or 1. The bigger part of the storm hit us around 2 or 3 a.m...