The Day Freddy Came to Town

The Day Freddy Came To Town
Earby Markham
All rights reserved

If you talk to longtime area residents, you’ll find out that just about everyone has stories about the night Hurricane Frederic slammed into our communities back in 1979 and how long and rough the night was. And usually, they also have stories about the heat, long lines and lack of ice and electricity in the weeks following Hurricane Frederic’s landfall.
However, I was there in it and afterwards and I have zero scary stories about that long and legitimately terrifying night.
Why? Because I slept through the entire night, I didn’t hear a thing.
But there was a dang good reason for that, I was completely and entirely exhausted. Exhausted to the point that fatigue overruled the adrenaline surge I was experiencing in anticipation of Freddy’s arrival.
I was 22 years old, and I was a brand-new reserve deputy with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Flotilla. I had reported for duty at 8:00 AM that morning at the old Sheriff’s substation at the Foley Horse Arena and been assigned notification and evacuation duties on West Beach Boulevard in Gulf Shores. The rain was already sporadically starting a little after 9 that morning when we got rolling. We spent hours that day assisting residents and some adventurous tourists out of their cabins and beach houses and got them on the road out of town. In addition to being rain soaked, I had enough wind borne sand stuck to me to qualify as a sugar cookie. I could hear the intensity of the storm growing throughout the day by the sound of the waves striking the beach and raindrops that felt like I was being shot with marbles. Those raindrops hurt!
Around 4:00 in the afternoon, I was assigned to roadblock duty and partnered up with a full-time deputy who had a marked patrol car with a single revolving blue light (the type once referred to as a gum ball machine. Back when people knew what a gum ball machine was, that is.) mounted on the roof of the car. We were posted at the north side of the Intracoastal Waterway bridge to prevent any vehicles traveling south into Gulf Shores.
At the time there used to be a large aluminum sign posted on the shoulder of the bridge approach that said Welcome to Gulf Shores. It must have been around 4 feet tall and 6 feet wide. Sometime close to 5:00 PM the wind gusts finally dislodged the sign from its supports and it frisbee’d across the top of the deputy’s car and took the blue light with it to parts unknown. At that point we decided it was time to seek shelter for ourselves. Landfall was still hours away but the clouds and driving rain had already started bringing in an early evening.
I recall that it took me over an hour and a half to drive from north of Gulf Shores back to Spanish Fort, a trip that under normal conditions would have taken me about 35 or 40 minutes. And there was virtually no other traffic on the road, but the winds were so fierce that it seemed to be a contest of two steps forward, one step back.
Once I finally arrived at my little rented wooden house on Highway 31 in the Spanish Fort community, I dragged myself and my gear inside. I had been salty rain soaked for hours by that point and my handgun and all my leather gear were soaking wet and had to be tended to. Once those chores were finished, I threw my uniform (simply a pair of Dickie’s khaki pants and long sleeve khaki with a couple of department patches on the sleeves) into the washing machine and myself into a hot shower.
By now it was around 8:00 PM and the howling winds and heavy rain were the predominant sounds. Once I and all my gear were squared away, I drug a mattress into the small central hallway of the little house. My (former) wife asked me what I was doing. I told her that I was going to sleep, because I had no more gas in my tank. And that’s exactly what I did.
I slept through the entire night. Everyone talks about the horror filled night of sitting in the dark and hearing the world outside as it tore itself apart. Physically jumping every time something large struck the house. Not being able to see in the dark and the hard driving rain.
Hurricane Fredric was a class 4 hurricane and reached 130 mph just before coming ashore. I lived about 30 miles inland, north of Gulf Shores. So there wasn’t much reduction in wind speeds by the time it my place. Still in the 100mph plus range easily.
Hurricane Freddy basically wiped Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Fort Morgan off the beach and into the waters. Overall damages from him exceeded 2.3 billion 1979 dollars. Yet, I never even heard the first transformer blow or any of the trees breaking up and falling. Instead, I woke up to a bright, shiny morning that looked like it was illuminating a battlefield. Miraculously trees had fallen all around the house but none had fallen on it. Other than the ends of a couple of limbs, nothing even had touched it.
After ascertaining that the house and both of our cars had survived without major damage, I left and returned to the Foley substation for post hurricane duty.
Everyone else has their cool stories of how they passed through a night of terror, fear and worry and all I can say is that I missed it, because I slept through it. If I dreamed that night or not, I no longer remember. Because if I dreamed, the dreams would have all been nightmares. Because this was just the beginning of nightmares for so many people.
At the time I had no idea just how much and long Hurricane Frederic would change the Alabama Gulf Coast. If you ever visited Gulf Shores are Orange Beach before Hurricane Frederic you know what I mean. Before Freddy the tallest building on the beach was a three story Holiday Inn and you could actually see the beach and the water from the road. Now it’s all high rise concrete and beach chairs and umbrellas aligned with precision.
The quaint little beach town is long gone.