Shortly after Hurricane Idalia paid our area a visit, some of the talking heads in the national media began preaching doom and despair for the folks in Madison and Taylor Counties. It seems, in their infinite wisdom, that our two counties are so woefully poor, recovery will take forever and the damage done may be beyond repair.
These pundits “ain’t from around here.” Yes, most of the other Florida counties have higher incomes than Madison and Taylor Counties, but that is the only fact these reports got right. Our recovery has little to do with money. It has everything to do with mindset.
I have seen just about everyone helping everyone since the storm passed. No one within earshot of me has said “We will never make it out of this.” I have heard plenty of comments about being grateful that it wasn’t worse and that no lives were lost. I have seen strangers walking into heavily damaged yards, with chainsaws in hand, ready to help. I have seen churches and schools transform into hubs of support, offering food and supplies for hundreds of people daily.
Formerly impassable roads are clear, the lights are on and free of those dreaded flickers, and most people are back at work. I realize we still have a long way to go, but we will get there, one day at a time. We will get there because we know where “there” is. It’s home to us.
The data may say we are poor, but we know better. I’ve lived briefly in other places, and I often felt invisible. My first trip to a grocery store when I was in college was an eye opener. I was in and out of the store in five minutes. Not one sweet old lady stopped to ask me how my family was doing. No classmate teased me about my high school days. Not a soul yelled my nickname from across the store. There was none of that. I felt very poor.
It can take 30 minutes just to get to the bread aisle in Madison. Everybody knows everyone, and most of them care how the other is doing, and they will enquire of one’s wellbeing at first sight. We aren’t Madison Strong because of a hurricane. We got that way because of our roots that are entwined in families that have been here for generations, working together, eating together and worshiping together. They don’t make storms big enough to uproot us. Circumstances may take our trees, our homes and our electricity, but they won’t touch our hearts.
We know a secret that the city folks long to know. People, not possessions, make a community. In Madison County, our people are the greatest resource in the world. We are rich, and we will always be, because we always have been, Madison Strong.