These events happened 65 years ago as of this writing.

When I was in kindergarten, Hurricane Hazel tore through our part of the country. It was October 15, 1954, late in the hurricane season, hence the name Hazel. Hurricane Hazel was unusual in two ways. First, it followed an unusual path, a relative bee line straight from Haiti to Central New York and Lake Ontario. The eye of the hurricane passed to the East of Rochester, New York, and only 50 miles from Baldwinsville. Second, Hazel actually gained in strength after passing over the Appalachian Mountains. Not even the Appalachians were enough to turn it back out to sea. It was a ferocious storm, but for me, the deadliest part of Hazel was yet to come.

Our farm was on a hill on Perry Road, across Dead Creek and at the edge of The Kingdom, a picturesque plateau of rolling hills and farms on the way to Jack's Reef, upstream on the Seneca River from Baldwinsville.

My Dad bought the little farm, which we would call the "Old Home", because he wanted to raise chickens and sell eggs, but he kept his factory job in Syracuse, which was quite a distance to get to work, especially in snow. He soon found that he could not compete with much larger chicken farms, and so when I was 5 years old he decided to give up the farm and move the family closer to his work. The little farm on Perry Road was a wonderful place for me as a little boy, and I remember many happy times there with my two brothers, David and Gary.

My sister Marilyn was two when we moved into a tiny house trailer in Jack's Reef, NY. There was a farm across the road from the trailer park, with fields of corn, and a big blue enameled silo by the barn. We played with other children in the trailer park, but very soon we moved again, taking the trailer with us to a place called Barbara Lane.

Barbara Lane was a dead-end dirt road belonging to Mr. Beckley, a man who was selling lots from his long, narrow property in between two very large farms, one an active farm owned by the Melvins and on the other side of Mr. Beckley's property an inactive farm owned by an old retired farmer.

Barbara Lane extended from Route 370 at the top of the hill, all the way down to the Seneca River. Uphill from our property the road was paved and there were established houses and famillies, but the road became dirt just up from us, and progressively more primitive as it went down to the river.

At the time my Dad moved in, ours was the last house down the road, but soon there would be other families moving in with trailers and some, like my Dad, building their house on their lot. That was my Dad's plan. He bought two lots, one for the trailer, and another lot next to it where he would build our new house in a year or two.

Dad set the trailer on a piece of land at the edge of a small patch of forest, a thickly wooded lot between our lot and the house up the road, which was the home of the Viau family, newly moved in from Quebec, Canada. Charlie Viau and his sister Claudette grew up there. Charlie Viau was one grade ahead of me and he would go to the same Catholic grade school, St. Mary's School.

The weather that fall had been dark and rainy, even when we were in the trailer park it was cloudy all the time. We snuggled into the tiny trailer, Mom, Dad, David, Me, Gary and Marilyn. Six people in a tailer that was probably only 200 square feet or so. The size of two bedrooms. To this day I can't comprehend how my Mom cooked for us in the tiny kitchen. We boys slept in a bunk bed. Marilyn slept with Mom & Dad. Two weeks after the hurricane, a new sister, Lorraine, would come to join us.

I don't remember the night of the hurricane, although my Dad told me about it years later. He said that the wind had taken hold of the big elm & maple trees in the woods next to us and twisted them together and swept the ground with them like a broom. He saw great balls of lightning rolling down the hill.

The ground on our lot was soft from underground springs and black mud from centuries of rotting leaves and forest debris.The rain and wind from the hurricane softened up the ground more and our tailer began to tip over. There was a movie released in 1954 called The Long Long Trailer, starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. There is a scene in the movie where the trailer falls on its side in the mud in a rainstorm. We went to the drive-in to see that movie, and it was uncanny how it resembled what happened to our trailer. Even our trailer and the one in the movie were both made by the New Moon trailer company.   Fortunately our trailer remained barely upright, athough percariously. I remember coming home from kindergarten and coming into the trailer with my muddy boots on, sliding on my feet across the room, and slamming into the wall.

My brother Gary remembers that the black mud was so deep that it sucked our boots off of our feet as we made our way to the traler.   A few years laer we were playing softball and I went long to catch a fly ball and stepped in the mud - which we called "quick mud", because it was just like quicksand, only mud.  My leg went up to my hip and I could not pull myself out because of the suction. .  The other boys formed a human chain and pulled me out.  

Dad jacked the trailer back to level, and life went on. My brother and I spent many hours exploring in the patch of forest next door, finding trilliums and jack-in-the-boxes and salamanders and building little campfires with sticks, and getting poison ivy on our hands.

Spring came, and with it some new neighbors moved their trailers into the vacant lots down the road from us. This meant that the electrical lines had to be extended down the road as well, and a crew came to install new power poles and wiring to supply the new homes . As a little boy I watched the lineman climb up the pole with the clamps on his boots that he jabbed into the wood pole to get a foothold, and he wore a safety belt around his waist with a safety rope around the pole which he would shimmy up the pole as he climbed. He had a big tool belt full of tools to install the wires. I watched him with fascination. I was now six years old.

The hurricane had broken off a big tree in the middle of the wood lot next to our property, The tree broke off about six or eight feet up the trunk, and the top part of the tree fell to the ground, but where it broke from the trunk it was still attached to the trunk, with big splinters of yellow wood sticking out from both pieces of the broken trunk. The part of the tree that fell made a ramp up to the top of the broken trunk, where it was almost two feet in diameter.

I wanted to play lineman, so I took a piece of cotton clothesline rope about 1/2 inch in diameter and I tied a loop around my waist like a belt, and I tied another loop around the leaning tree trunk. One loop around me, connected to another loop around the fallen tree. This wasn't exactly like the lineman's safety belt, which had only one loop around the pole and attached at each end to his belt.

I didn't have boots with cleats like a real lineman, so I climbed up the part of the tree that was leaning to the ground, and I slid my tree loop up the trunk as I climbed up. But the tree bark was slippery, my sneakers slipped, and I slid off the tree. I was high enough up the leaning ramp that my feet could not touch the ground. As much as I tried to stretch my toes, they could only barely touch, and I couldn't support myself on my toes. The loop around my waist slid up around my chest and squeezed.

I could barely breathe. I couldn't move the rope, it was too tight around the tree. I couldn't reach the knots to undo them. They were little boy square knots and they tightened up under my weight. I was alone in the woods. No one knew where I was. No one could see me in the thick trees. I had gone off alone, and I couldn't breathe, and I began to be very afraid. My only hope was that someone would see me or hear me, but I could barely make a sound.

Suddenly I could see Mr. Holton came out his back door. Mr. Holton lived one house further away than Mr, Viau's house, which was just on the other side of the wood lot. I managed to cry "Help", but it was very soft. I couldn't yell or scream. "Help". But Mr. Holton did not hear me. He went back inside. My heart sank.

I was afraid for my life, but then I had hope. Mr. Viau had visitors at his home, and his visitors were leaving to go back to Canada. He came out of his house with suitcases, and the visitors were at their car getting ready to leave, but they were talking, and again they could not hear my weakening cry for help. I was sad because I was going to die. Mr. Viau went back in his house, but he may have gone to get something, because he came back out of his house.

I summoned up all the strength I could and cried for help once more. I knew it was my last chance. I saw Mr. Viau turn in my direction. He was perhaps 100 feet away. He jumped back into his house and came running out with a big butcher knife. He ran right up to me and cut the rope, and I fell to the ground.

I didn't hear him say a word to me. Perhaps because he barely spoke English. I was weak, but I got up and walked away, back to my house.

I never told anyone in my family that Mr, Viau had saved my life. I never told anyone about it for many, many years because when I would try to tell the story, I would begin to cry. Even to this day.

Mr. Viau cut down the tree so that little boys would not be tempted to climb it any more. The woods remained a place for my brother and me to spend many times pretending we were Robin Hood, or medieval knights with swords, or building our little campfires with twigs, or looking for arrowheads; long after Hurricane Hazel had been forgotten. But I would never forget that Mr. Viau saved my life that day.

Whenever I travel to my home town, I always take a little trip back to Perry Road, to the Kingdom, to Whiskey Hollow, and Barbara Lane.

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Milton and Theresa Viau and their daughter Claudette are now buried a few paces away from the grave of my Mom & Dad in St. Mary's Cemetery in Baldwinsville. In a sense they are still neighbors.

In 2017 while visiting Baldwinsville I drove down Barbara Lane, and I spotted Charlie Viau mowing the lawn at his Dad's front yard. I stopped and he recognized me immediately. Amazing. We spent an hour or so reminiscing on our childhood together.

MAP

- Canada's worst storm

- Highest winds ever recorded in Washington DC

-Only hurricane to make landfall in North Carolina