Visiting my hometown in the aftermath of its greatest natural disaster in modern history brought a series of frustrations and minor hardships:

• I never did contact a number of friends and relatives I usually see because they had no power or phone. Cell phones were the only form of communication for some.
• I wonder about a favorite auntie who's nearing 90. I'm told the storm left her depressed for the first time in her long life - so depressed she would not see me. I hear she's otherwise OK, but I also worry about her priceless collection of 17th and 18th Century European Master paintings. Hopefully, she moved them to a friend's home where they could stay air-conditioned.
• On my first and second night in town, I drove around in the dark looking for an open grocery store or restaurant. I waited in LONG lines at some intersections where traffic signals were out.

  Remarkably, Memphis drivers, not known for their courtesy or driving skills, quickly got into the habit of treating every intersection as a 4-Way Stop.

  The City never did put temporary stop signs at intersections, though they did have cops directing traffic at some of the big intersections during daylight.

  The most dangerous intersections were the ones with no signal, traffic lights or warning that a 4-Way Stop was there.

• I enjoyed a take-out meal by flashlight with my mother and stepfather in stifling humidity.

Bear in mind, Memphis is a place where everyone has air-conditioning. Summer nights are often hot and steamy; days are real hot and real steamy. To many, it's unthinkable or at least uncivilized to live without air conditoning -- until now.

At my home in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've used my window AC on three days this summer. In Memphis, there might be three days between May and September when you can do without.

On Getwell Road on a hot Saturday afternoon, I saw people literally hanging out their windows for a breath of less humid air, hoping for a breeze. Others just accepted the misery. What else can you do?

I happened to see Cybil Shepard's brother, Bill. I had never seen him look so unhappy or hopeless. He was enjoying shopping in an air-conditioned natural foods store. At closing time, he was not looking forward to returning to a home with no lights, power or fresh air.

The upside of a situation like that is the bonding that occurs among citizens who otherwise would not speak to each other. The kindness of strangers abounded. Those with fireplaces and wood stoves have enough free firewood to last for years. Scavenger trucks are all over town.

I drove around in awe of the power of what had occurred. Cruising my old neighborhoods, I found many old, familiar trees destroyed. That was deeply sad.

A dozen or more times a day I found myself saying, "Thank G-d it wasn't worse."

My mother lives in a beautiful ranch-style house with a lot of glass. While huge trees rested against their bedroom and skylight, the only damage was to a corner of their carport. Thank G-d it wasn't worse.

On my first visit there in daylight, I walked around taking pictures of some of the damage. The ruins of a dozen or more estate trees led me to grieve. For a while I felt stupid crying over fallen trees when people died as a result of this storm.

Later I drove toward a house where I grew up. The six-lane street was down to two because of huge trees and scattered yard debris. I saw a man standing in the right-of-way by a pile of huge trees. As my car approached, I wondered why he didn't move out of the way. When I got near, I could see he was grieving deeply over his losses and didn't feel like moving. I saw other men crying in their front yards -- southern macho men. So it was OK for me to grieve, too.

With a news industry that loves and thrives on disasters, why didn't this one get any national ink?

Everyone I knew had their own account of where they were and what they experienced. My mother said she went outside to get the paper around 6:30 a.m. "I felt a few raindrops in the driveway and by the time I got back to the bedroom I felt like I was in the middle of the Bogart movie, 'Key Largo'."

My niece Ellie, who is 7, woke up her baby-sitter and said, "Dude, the power's out!" Then they all watched the violent storm from a 2nd floor window. Mom didn't like that and they've been prepped to retreat to the basement if anything like that happens again.

Some of my out-of-town classmates stayed away from the reunion after hearing the news. Their parents told them not to come, they couldn't accommodate them. Some locals were too involved in recovering their property. The long-anticipated reunion of friends from 30 years ago was suddenly less important. So we'll have a 35th.

Memphis has a long-suffering inferiority complex. Some historians say it never fully recovered from the Yellow Fever Epidemic of the 1800s. Though Memphis is a major metro area of 1 million people covering three states and five counties, it has never had high self-esteem. It has a history of mixed notoriety: the birthplace of the blues, the home of rock Œn' roll, the city where MLK was killed and the place where Lennox Lewis pummeled Mike Tyson once and for all.