LECANTO - The two neighbors arrived separately amid the halls filled with old men sleeping under blankets in wheelchairs, women stretched out on the floor with headphones stuck to their ears and the lucky few who rested on air mattresses.
But in this storm shelter, a new "neighborhood" of sleeping bags and even tents, John Phelps and Harry Parham found each other, and parked their belongings and families in one of the halls of the school building.
Outside Rooms 125 and 128, the neighbors, who live in mobile homes down the street from each other in Homosassa, became neighbors again, helping each other ride out the storm with food, friendly conversation and familiarity - a scarce commodity in shelterland.
Lecanto Primary School looked like a cross between an overcrowded hospital and airport concourse as evacuees and luggage filled its linoleum floors. As of noon Sunday, 844 people in Citrus County had sought refuge at four county shelters as Hurricane Frances began pounding the area. Mandatory evacuations for mobile home residents and those living in low-lying areas drove them there. Once inside, officials decided early Sunday morning, people could not leave until the storm subsided.
Phelps sat in a green lawn chair, his cup holder cradling a purple plastic cup. Nearby, his wife, Tammy, tended to 11-month-old Chelsie, who was in a green playpen they had brought. Brittanie, 10, and Ashlie, 11, played board games they brought from home, all 500 uninsured square feet of it.
Parham sat feet away from Phelps in an $8 reclining blue lawn chair he had bought from Wal-Mart and covered with a comforter. His wife, Tina, relaxed across from him in a similar setup. Tobie, the couple's 8-year-old daughter in shiny purple pajamas, and Michael, their 10-year-old son, played with the Phelps' children.
The Phelps family brought a cooler filled with sandwiches, beanie weenies and Pop Tarts, while the Parhams brought and filled a nearby table with potato chips, sacks of apples, bottled water, fruit punch, vapor rub and bananas.
While the children played, the couples talked. Dreams of Dreyers ice cream and Hershey's syrup. Tales of the Phelps' four dogs. Tina Parham's open heart surgery two months ago.
Tammy Phelps learned from another friend she found at the shelter that an elderly man who had lived near both families had died recently.
"Oh, my gosh," Harry Parham said, before rattling off a story about the man they could all relate to.
"I'm going to tell the girls," Tammy Phelps said. "They're really fond of him."
"Don't tell the girls," John Phelps replied. "There's enough commotion in their life. Don't tell the girls. They don't need to know."
On a school television set up in the middle of the hall, a TV reporter in Brevard County reported from a street flooded ankle-deep, making both families wonder: What next? "That thing's so big, it's scary," John Phelps said as he watched a television radar picture of Frances.
"Size of Texas," Harry Parham said.
"Heck, I tell you who I feel sorry for," Phelps said, alluding to the victims of Hurricane Charley. "All those people who got slammed like in Hardee County."
The neighbors continued talking into the night about their neighborhood and people who lived there. Phelps brought up another story and asked Parham if he knew the story's subject.
"With Tina being sick," Harry said, "you guys are the only ones I know."
