"Wasn't That A Mighty Storm"

I heard this song this morning on WXPN. Michaela Majoun of the Morning Show played it. She said when she heard about Katrina, this was the one song that kept rolling through her head. I could swear I heard in her voice that she was holding back tears.

The song is about the worst hurricane disaster to ever hit our country in modern recorded times. It was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. That hurricane wiped out over 6,000 lives.

The similarities between Galveston and New Orleans are frightening. Reading the history of both can make one actually shudder.

6,000 lives ... gone. Nothing more than a statistic in a sentence in a history book. And that's what makes me cry. Life is more than a number.

I only pray Katrina doesn't try to go for the record.

Wasn't That A Mighty Storm

(Traditional; Arrangement by Tom Rush & Eric Von Schmidt)

[Chorus:]

Wasn't that a mighty storm

Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning, well

Wasn't that a mighty storm That blew all the people all away

You know the year of 1900

Children, many years ago

Death came howling on the ocean

Death calls, you got to go

Now Galveston had a seawall

To keep the water down, and a

High tide from the ocean

Spread the water over the town

[Chorus]

You know the trumpetS give them warning

You'd better leave this place

Now, no one thought of leaving

'til death stared them in the face

And the trains they all were loaded

The people were all leaving town

The trestle gave way to the water

And the trains they went on down

[Chorus]

Rain it was a' falling

Thunder began to roll

Lightning flashed like hell fire

The wind began to blow

Death the cruel master

When the wind began to blow

Rode in on a team of horses

T cried, "Death, won't you let me go".

[Chorus]

Hey, now trees fell on the island

And the houses give away

Some they strained and drowned

Some died in most every way

And the sea began to rolling

And the ships they could not stand

And I heard a captain crying

"God save a drowning man".

[Chorus]

Death your hands are clammy

You got them on my knee

You come and took my mother

Won't you come back after me

And the flood it took my neighbor

Took my brother too

I thought I heard my father calling

And I watched my mother go

[Chorus]

You know the year of 1900

Children, many years ago

Death came howling on the ocean

Death calls, you got to go

[Chorus 2x]