The Galveston County Daily News

I was 12. My mother and I lived in Clifton By The Sea, now known as Bacliff.

Our house on Eighth Street was a little summer house with wooden shutters that were kept opened with a stick.

The heat was unbearable and had been for several days. The sky had been a strange color — lavender, blue and yellow all morning.

My mother and I walked to the beach and angry waves were splashing up over the embankment and onto the street. We had never seen it like this. I was frightened. We both knew something bad was happening.

Later the rain came and the wind blew in gusts. In the afternoon the wind started to intensify.

I watched through an open shutter as our porch roof was blown off and the wind pushed it around to the left side of the house.

My mother told me we were going to crawl out one of the shutters on the left side of the house and to hold tight to her hand as we would try to cross the street to the Ellingtons’ house. It was all we could do to stand up in the wind and the rain that was beating down on us was cold as ice.

We could barely see where we were going.

We had no more arrived to the Ellingtons’ house before the wind blew off their kitchen door.

All of us picked up their wooden kitchen table and Mr. Ellington nailed it over the door opening.

Mrs. Ellington was going to make some coffee as we tried to dry ourselves off when the house started to move.

It was as if it were lifted into the air and slowly listed to the ground, leaning heavily to the right.

We were all frozen in position.

After we realized we were all OK, we knew the house had been blown off the block foundation. Once we got the hang of walking around at that odd angle, we began to watch out the windows to see what was happening.

Through the heavy sheets of rain we watched as a little summer house, that was on the next lot to our house, was lifted high into the air and just exploded like it was matchsticks.

By now it was dark. Somehow we got a little sleep as the rain pounded and the wind made eerie noises.

The next morning the rain had stopped and we could see that there was nothing left of our house except the floor, with everything in place.

Even the dishes on the table and the dishes in the little corner cabinet were not harmed.

Of course everything was sopping wet. All the books, pictures, etc., were ruined.

Sometime that morning several Army trucks came to take people who needed a place to stay to places of safety, saying another storm was on the way.

Many went, but we and the Ellingtons stayed.

A little frame two-story at the first of our street was left with the top half folded over the garage. I cannot remember if anyone that lived there was hurt or even survived.

We heard our school (from first to eighth grade) in San Leon had been destroyed. We would now be going to Dickinson.

There was no following storm. I imagine they said that to get people to a place of safety.

Days later we heard that the reason people were not notified prior to the storm was because of the German U boats in the Gulf.

Two to three weeks later tons of oil soaked sheets, pillowcases and many other linen type articles washed up on the beach. Everyone was picking them up and soaking them in kerosene to remove the oil. You must remember it was a time of war. Linens were a luxury.

Though most of us had had losses, we all realized we still had much to be thankful for. We had survived.

Lavelle Bedow Skufca Santa Fe