Michelle McGill-Vargas

(Image by Imran Schah from Creative Commons)

“Looks like Costco done upchucked all over your yard.”

My eyes roll at the gravelly voice scratching its way over the chain-link fence separating our yards. Mr. Woods has been standing there, every day for the past month, chiding my family about our preparations. Sometimes he’d just hum some old gospel hymn and wait for me to look up before saying something he thought was funny.

This time, I don’t even lift my head. Not even as seven fighter jets, a daily sight nowadays, scream overhead. Can’t waste my energy on anger when I have bottled water, batteries, toilet paper, and canned goods to haul into my cellar.

“You hear what I said, young fella?”

After forty years at US Steel’s Gary Works, you’d think he’d have something better to do in retirement than badger me all summer. I walk over to the outside…