STRANGER THAN FICTION: DANNY DOES HIS THING IN FLORIDA: ONE HURRICANE'S STORY

A category 1 hurricane may not be bad, but it sure can ruin a weekend.

As natural disasters go, hurricanes are among the most bizarre.

Take tornadoes. They're a lot like bad love affairs. They whirl into your life unexpectedly, do a lot of damage and then disappear, leaving you (and your therapist) to clean up the mess.

Here in Florida, comically referred to as "The Sunshine State," people were bracing for Danny three days in advance of his actual Gulf Coast arrival. By Friday, the day of his official graduation from tropical storm to full-blown hurricane, you couldn't find a bottle of Evian or a can of pork and beans from the Florida Panhandle to the Tennessee state line.

The pork-and-bean frenzy was due, in part, to the Florida media. Pound-for-pound, nothing tops a good hurricane for news value down here. Sure, there was Madonna's pregnancy and Prince Charles' affair with a woman who bears a close resemblance to Winston Churchill, but even those things didn't warrant round-the-clock coverage.

Newspaper reporters are lucky. We've got 24 hours to think things through before the next paper comes out. Television people don't have that luxury. They have to come up with something new to say for live coverage every 15 minutes.

I think Danny's most entertaining moment came from a Mobile, Ala., television reporter standing by a baby for a live report. He wanted to show the rubberneckers sitting near the water in their cars.

"Turn around and show the people those cars, Bubba," the reporter directed his cameraman. Bubba dutifully panned over to the cars.

Just SAYING "Bubba" cracks me up. You never really think of that name belonging to someone in a technical field.

Under the "dark humor" heading, another Alabama gentleman called a television station and ended up doing a live report.

"I don't want anybody to think they can mess around with this deal," he warned, choking up just a little. "I just lost two real good coon dogs in it!"

I guarantee those dogs went to live with someone smart enough to bring them inside during a hurricane.

Yes, it was difficult for the television people to fill up all that airtime. But newspaper reporting was no day in the park, either. We had to pull together, and pull together we did.

All days off were canceled, and this corn-fed Midwestern girl spent Friday night riding with a pizza delivery man and then sitting in a 24-hour grocery. I learned that natural disasters may hamper newspaper delivery, but nothing stops the pizza dude. I also noted that at 1 a.m. Saturday, in the worst part of the hurricane, beer sales outpaced bottled water sales 4-to-1.

Hey, Pensacolians know how to weather a storm.

The best piece of advice I received came from one of the newspaper editors here, a grizzled hurricane veteran named Mac. I like Mac because he's smart, funny and the only person at the newspaper who outweighs me.

He walked up to me Saturday morning carrying a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

"You know how to survive a hurricane, don't you?" he asked.

I shook my head no.

"You gotta eat your way through."

He was right. Three doughnuts later, I was feeling a lot less nervous about the whole thing.

Sure, it was bad for my diet. But how often do hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast?

Don't answer that.