All my life, Dad has talked about what a scamp he was as a kid. Yet, there were no stories to back up his claim. Was this silence on his part due to not wanting to set a bad examples for his four children?

Perhaps.

It’s only now that the confessions are spilling forth.

As his confessor, I am impressed, but not yet mortified.

Here’s a story: Times have changed over the generations, thank heavens. Back in the 1930s, Catholics were fiercely commanded not to enter the church of another faith. In fact, it was best to cross the street to avoid walking on the sidewalk in front of another church.

(I picture God the Father shaking his head wearily, “That’s not what I meant. It’s really not what I meant.”)

Well, on September 21, 1938, Dad not only stepped on the sidewalk in front of a non-Catholic church, he walked onto the grounds and picked up a dozen or so horse chestnuts.

You know, these prickly looking things:

Dad remembers the denomination of the church, and its address. Sure enough, there’s still a First Church of Christ, Scientist on Andover Street in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Anyway, it was a windy day. So windy, in fact, that schools closed a few hours early. The wind knocked enough horse chestnuts down to the ground that Dad simply couldn’t resist. He stuffed a bunch up inside his sweater and tucked the sweater inside his slacks, creating a pouch. Then he headed for home.

When I asked Dad what he did with the horse chestnuts, his answer was immediate: “Well, I didn’t throw them at my sisters!”

That was the day the northeast was thrashed by the Great New England Hurricane of 1938.

Most were caught unawares because a hurricane rarely made it that far north, and there simply wasn’t an advance warning system in place. (One article I read stated a junior forecaster with the National Weather Bureau caught wind of the upcoming storm two days before it happened, but his “superiors” didn’t agree, and the warning didn’t go out until the afternoon of the storm.)

Dad remembers the electricity being out, trees falling, and massive flooding (he lived one block from the Merrimack River). One neighborhood tree came crashing down on a field-stone street marker, crushing the top half. Not a big loss; the eight year old (and apparently the now 89-year-old) lad considered the pedestal to be pretentious.

Dad’s family lived on Andover Street in Lowell. Here’s a recent look:

I asked Dad if he was scared that day:

“If I’d had any sense, I would have been afraid.”

Indeed, hundreds died as the hurricane barreled its way from Long Island that afternoon north through Canada into the night.

In New Haven, Connecticut, my Aunt Bunny remembers that day, too. She was just five and in Kindergarten. She recalls utter chaos at school: “The Sisters told us to go – and we did!”

As the children raced the hurricane home, apparently Bunny took a longer route than the rest. When Mom arrived alone, Grandma (who was cradling baby Ray) asked her brother Pip to go look for Bunny. He found her and drove her home, safe and sound.

In all, about 700 died in the Category 3 Hurricane (this was before they were assigned names) with another 700 injured.

The damage, some of which remained untouched for more than a decade, surpassed $5 billion in today’s dollars.

If you’re wondering about what happened to that junior forecaster, he must have resisted the urge to say “I told you so.”

Charles Pierce was in his first year with the weather bureau when the 28 year old tried to convince senior forecasters that, using new technology, this increasingly strong storm appeared to be on an unusual course.

He continued his career at the Weather Service:

Dad always loved a good storm.

I remember – as a kid – standing out on the front porch with him as a thunderstorm raged, just to experience it with him. I also remember thinking there had to be a better way to bond with my father!

My husband, Gary, is a weather watcher, too. As a farmer, it’s part of his job description. He and Dad were both delighted when our grandson, Cameron, while watching the weather on TV, happily declared:

“There’s an 80 percent chance of participation!”

In our family, Cam, that’s just about right.

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