Keep Going

By Wayne Smith

Oct. 7, 2026

5 a.m.

I probably should have still been asleep. Instead, I was looking at hurricane forecasts and portable power stations.

Welcome to hurricane preparation on the Alabama Gulf Coast.

At that point Wednesday morning, the system in the Gulf was still a tropical storm. Where it would go, how strong it would become and exactly what it would mean for Gulf Shores remained uncertain.

There was one thing I knew – if I stayed and lost power, I needed some way to keep my refrigerator running.

I live in a condo, so a gasoline generator wasn’t really an option. I needed one of those large battery-powered stations that could be charged beforehand and used safely indoors.

Simple enough, I thought. It wasn't.

6 a.m.

Home Depot. Generators? Yes.

The kind of battery power station I needed? No.

Next stop, Lowe’s. Same story.

I knew approximately what I needed. Something in the 1,500- to 2,000-watt-hour range, enough output to handle a refrigerator and a few basic necessities. Knowing what you need doesn’t help much when nobody has it.

And the more I searched, the more my mind started going in a dozen directions.

Do I stay? Do I leave?

How bad is this thing going to get?

If I leave, do I go to my son’s in Wetumpka? My daughter’s in Florence?

What do I take? What do I leave behind?

This is the first hurricane threat I’ve faced here. All of those decisions are mine.

There is no Dorinda sitting beside me to talk it through. That’s one of the things no one told me about in losing her – difficult decisions are made alone.

6:30 a.m.

I was leaving Lowe’s frustrated and confused.

Around that same time, a close friend reached out through Messenger just to make sure I was OK.

That meant more than she probably realized.

I was also texting with my children. I wasn’t completely alone in this.

But there is a difference between having people who care about you and having the person who was always there beside you.

Then the radio started playing The Boys of Summer.

One of my favorites. One of ours.

When it ended, the next song began.

Everlong. Back to back.

And this wasn’t one of my playlists. It was just a radio station playing two songs that carry an awful lot of history for me.

Maybe that’s all it was – two songs on the radio.

But sitting there with hurricane forecasts, empty shelves and too many decisions bouncing around in my head, it felt like something else.

It felt like Dorinda.

Keep going. Don’t panic. Don’t let your mind get too far ahead of itself.

Just take the next step. You’ll be OK.

So I did.

7 a.m.

Walmart. No luck.

Tractor Supply. Another possibility online, but nothing I could take home that morning.

Keep going.

8 a.m.

Harbor Freight. Finally.

There it was — a 2,000-watt portable power station with enough battery capacity to run my refrigerator and some basic necessities if the electricity went out. Sold.

While I was there, I added a lantern and extra batteries.

The woman who helped me get the power station into my vehicle told me the store had sold about $45,000 worth of generators the night before. That tells you something about what was happening around Baldwin County.

Everybody was preparing. Some probably knew exactly what they were doing. Others, like me, were figuring it out as we went.

9 a.m.

I had backup power. I had a lantern. I had batteries. I had gas in the vehicle.

What I still didn’t have was an answer to the biggest question. Was I staying?

Afternoon

That’s the strange thing about waiting on a hurricane I’ve discovered, unlike a tornado: Life can look remarkably normal.

People were still sitting on the beach in Gulf Shores. The Gulf didn’t look particularly threatening. Palm trees moved in the breeze under a bright sky.

But a few miles inland, cars were gathering around gas pumps. Generators were disappearing from stores. The Gulf State Park Pier was closed.

And every few hours there was another forecast to study. More than 30 years as a journalist had kicked in, too. When something is happening, I still find myself looking for the picture that tells the story.

Maybe that’s how I process things. Part of me was preparing for the storm. Another part was documenting it.

By then, my morning search for a way to keep the refrigerator running had turned into a much bigger question: Maybe I shouldn’t be here to plug it in.

I’m about 5 miles from the coast, north of the Intracoastal Waterway, so I’m not sitting directly on the beach. That gives me some comfort. But there are still the questions of wind, tornadoes, flooding and power outages.

As I write this, I’m leaning toward leaving early in the morning and heading north to my son’s or to my daughter's. But even that isn’t an easy decision.

There’s also my mobility to consider.

And if the storm affects much of Alabama, there could be heavy rain, tornadoes, downed trees and outages well inland. And then there’s the question of getting back home afterward if roads are blocked or power remains out along the coast.

And I will want to come back. Because this is home now. I’ve lived here long enough that those words no longer feel temporary.

And inside my condo are things that don’t necessarily have great monetary value, but they have enormous value to me. Photographs. Memories. Pieces of a life Dorinda and I shared.

Things you can’t replace by filing an insurance claim. If a window blows out or the roof leaks …

So tonight, I’ll watch another forecast. I’ll listen to what emergency officials are saying about Hurricane Isaias. I’ll make sure the power station I spent half the morning searching for is fully charged. And then I’ll decide.

This morning, when my thoughts were going in every direction, two familiar songs came over the radio.

Back to back. Maybe coincidence. Maybe exactly what I needed.

Either way, the message I took from them was simple.

Keep going. One step at a time.