Oysterville Methodist Church, 1872-1922

     I don’t know when the storm warning flags quit being flown near the Shellfish Lab in Nahcotta, but I miss them.  One red pennant meant a wind of 15 to 33 knots – a small craft warning.  Two red pennants were a gale warning – wind, 34 to 47 knots.  One red square flag with a black center was a storm warning – wind 48 to 63 knots.
     Two red square flags with black centers, meaning winds of 64 knots and up, were never flown here on the Peninsula.  They are a hurricane warning.  According to the U.S. Weather Service, a hurricane is a tropical storm and, therefore, we don’t have hurricanes here.  Never mind that we have hurricane force winds!
     Last night I awoke several times and listened to the house moan and groan and shriek in protest to the gusts.  I thought that we might lose more than a shingle or two – maybe even a part of the roof.  I was buffeted with memories and stories about high winds and it was hard to go back to sleep.
     I thought about my grandmother, for some reason alone in the house with the children, during the early nineteen hundreds when there was a big windstorm.  My grandfather had a hired man living in the “Ranch House” about a half mile south of town.  He became worried about Mrs. Espy and her brood and, unable to walk against the force of the wind, he  crawled on hands and knees clear to Oysterville to make sure they were all right!
     I thought, too, about my mother’s tale of watching the Methodist Church blow down in the storm of 1922.  My grandfather took the children to the upstairs north bedroom where they had a view of the church steeple rocking back and forth in the wind, the church bell tolling eerily until it finally pitched to earth.
     And, I thought about Virginia Williams Jones’ story of the flock of chickens in Ilwaco that were blown all the way to Seaview during one of the big winds of her childhood.  I was glad that our own chickens were safe and sound in their sturdy coop.  It was a west wind last night and I wouldn’t like to think of them being blown out into the bay.  I don’t think chickens are good swimmers.