The Salt Line, Vol. 121: The Grammar of Almost Fixed
Minutes of the Gulf Coast Committee on Reasonable Expectations, regular session, the Tuesday after the storm. A quorum was present, in the sense that everyone who could get a signal was there.
Item One: The Lead — On the Verbs of Recovery
The committee took up the week’s official bulletins and observed, without objection, that they are written in a dialect all their own. Escambia County, per WEAR, “aims” to start hurricane debris pickup Wednesday. The ECUA boil water notice, again per WEAR, remained in effect Monday and is “expected” to be lifted Tuesday for the mainland areas. Read the second headline twice, and notice who is not in it.
The committee wishes to be fair. A county that promises a debris truck on a fixed day, and then finds a tree across the road it has not yet reached, has made a promise it cannot keep. A county that says “aims” has made a statement it can. The verb is not evasion; it is a form of respect for a reader who has just spent a weekend learning how little the weather asks permission. A bulletin should not say “Wednesday” about a road it cannot see.
And yet the committee notes the part that is never in the bulletin: the distance between an aim and a curb. “Mainland areas” is a phrase doing a great deal of lifting. If your street is not on the mainland, the notice is silent about you, and silence is not a schedule. Anyone reading these from out of town will assume the coast is one place with one timetable. Residents know it is a string of neighborhoods, each with its own tense, and the practical task this week is finding out which tense is yours.
That means calling the utility, not the rumor. It means checking the county’s own notice for your address before you pour water into a coffee maker. It means treating every “expected” as a forecast and every “aims” as a hope with good manners, and planning for the day after it.
Ruling: The committee finds that the language of recovery is careful, honest and a little frightening. Read “expected” as “plan accordingly” and “aims” as “stay out of the way of the truck.” The motion to replace all such verbs with plain dates was defeated on grounds of accuracy. The motion to bring a sandwich to the nearest crew was carried unanimously.
Item Two: The Co-op Sets a Thursday
EREC reported late Monday night that 95 percent of its Escambia members have power again, with a 90 percent goal for Santa Rosa by Thursday. The committee is pleased, and observes that “goal” is the humblest noun in the bulletin, and the only one that comes with a day attached. Ruling: Progress acknowledged; the households still waiting are not a rounding error.
Item Three: The Waffle House Matter
The committee received word from WUWF that the Navarre Waffle House reopened Sunday and was, for locals, a welcome sight. The committee has long held that the chain works as an informal instrument of state, and that nothing says the worst has passed like a griddle in motion. Ruling: Hashbrowns are, for now, infrastructure.
Item Four: A Retro Evening on the Wharf, Orange Beach
In lighter business, the South Baldwin Newcomers Club invites the community to “Romp the Wharf,” a retro charity event at The Wharf, promising that you can sip, dine, shop and romp for a good cause. The committee, having spent a week on generators and tarps, finds the word “romp” restorative. Ruling: Romp approved, pending weather.
Adjournment
A town can survive a bad week. What it cannot survive is a bulletin that lies to it, and by that measure “aims” and “expected” are good news: a hedge is what an honest institution sounds like after the weather has reminded it who is in charge. Motion to adjourn carried.
— Chris
P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we’re missing? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side: /submit/
