First thing in the morning and only a few hours in advance of the hurricane, Yodar arrived at the post office with a huge roll of his blister packaging material, tied to several thousand pounds of ballast stones, attached to the rear bumper of his car by a long rope.

On arrival at the post office he untied the roll and using the rope formally attached to the bumper of his car, dragged his shipment into the post office, ballast and all. This was not a bad job at all as the roll and ballast floated several inches off the ground.

At this point the weight of the shipment had to be calculated by post office personell. The roll was positioned over the scale and tied securely to the scale plate. The scale, by the way, was firmly secured to the floor of the post office. Yodar then released the ballast stones which he had secured to the roll. The roll floated upward toward the ceiling indication a negative weight of several hundred-thousand pounds on the postal scale.

The postal clerk behind the counter shook his head and began counting the hundreds of dollars the post office owed Yodar for handling his package. Yodar took the money and headed for the bank. At just about the same time, the winds began to increase to their expected hurricane force of 15 to 20 miles per hour.

As Yodar pulled out of the parking lot the postal clerk untied Yodar’s package from the scale, in preparation of loading the shipment into a properly ballasted truck, for the trip to the airport.

Without the necessary ballast and no longer being attached to the postal scale, the package floated up to the ceiling of the post office, with the postal clerk dangling from the rope formally used to secure the package.

Resting against the ceiling of the post office and a gale force wind outside, the post office building began to vibrate on the foundation. At this point, one must realize, most buildings are engineered to rest their full weight on the foundation, but there was little or no consideration given to the idea of upward force being exerted from inside a building.

Lazily the building began to float upwards into the teeth of the storm. The postal clerk screamed for help and several other employees jumped to his aid. Now there were ten or eleven people hanging onto the rope as the post office building became completely airborne.

The wind, now a raging storm, blew the building along at ever increasing speeds as the now completely airborne building left the protection of our beloved mountain. As in most cases, here on the Gulf Coast, the wind was pushing the building, package and employees in an Easterly direction.

Seeing this from his car Yodar jammed on the brakes, leaped from his car and ran down the road under the post office building pointing back over his shoulder as he shouted “HEY!!!! California is THAT-A-WAY!!!”