Monday marked the first day of hurricane season.

The experts are predicting 14 named storms during the coming months. One is too many as far as I’m concerned.

If you have never gone through a hurricane be thankful.

Everytime I look at my kitchen table I am reminded of Hurricane Hazel. The table used to be in our upstairs apartment at the beach.

My aunt had two beach cottages at the time. There were two two-story houses that sat several blocks back from the beach.

When the weather forecasters started warning that a big storm was coming and we had better evacuate, we took heed. We had been down at the beach for a few days, but we didn’t waste any time coming back home to Hamlet.

We kept our ears glued to the news and rode out the storm at home.

Once we got the all clear, we were anxious to get back to Cherry Grove and survey the damage. Only property owners were allowed back on the beach immediately after the storm.

I have never seen anything like it.

All the landmarks were gone. It was total destruction. Our next door neighbors never found anything except the doorknob from their house. We were more fortunate.

Rooftops and broken pieces of what used to be familiar cottages were scattered up and down the beach.

Our cottages were knocked off their foundations. It took my aunt and all the help she could gather over a week to find the tops of the cottages.

The downstairs apartments were completely wiped away.

We eventually located the two upstairs apartments. One had floated down the road several blocks away from where it was originally located. The other was in the middle of a cluster of trees.

You could see the water marks several inches from the ceiling. There were dishes in the dish drainer unbroken.

And the big old kitchen table was still right where we left it.

All was a muddy mess, but with a lot of hard work it cleaned up nicely. What could be restored was restored. The remains of the cottages were moved to ocean front lots.

The mud was scraped off the kitchen table and it was refinished and brought back to Hamlet where it still holds the place of honor in the kitchen at home.

The National Hurricane Center captured my interest when they started talking about how many named storms we can expect this season. If they are anything like Hazel I don’t want to know.

Like I said, one hurricane is one too many.

Contact Lifestyles Editor Catherine Monk at 997-3111 ext. 16, e-mail cmonk@yourdailyjournal.com.