Gone With the Wind
Recently the news has been full of stories and pictures of the disasters created by the various hurricanes that have hit the United States as well as some of the islands in the Caribbean. In some cases, the levels of destruction have been devastating...and in others the inhabitants and their surroundings have fared much better.
When it comes to hurricanes, I am always thankful that a hurricane is an impossibility for us in the central United States. The most we reap from a hurricane is an occasional rainy spell that was fed by the storms on the coasts...and in Nebraska a rainy day is a good day! However, even though hurricanes are unlikely, we are susceptible to other types of storms. Following is a story from one of those times:
Our little town has a great fire and rescue team. If you need an ambulance, a team of trained EMT's will show up, medical bags in hand, to be sure you get taken safely to the hospital. If your house is on fire, they are there to dampen down the flames. And if there is a pending tornado, the sirens will ring! The whole tornado siren thing is a newer addition to their services, but not in 1963 when our world got a bit of a shaking.
It was a Saturday evening, June 8th to be exact. It had been a hot day, and the evening wasn't really cooling things off much either. Dad was out and about, and Mom was home with us kids. It was the kind of hot and sticky that just made the house seem stifling...we apparently didn't have air-conditioning at the time because the house was open.
I am now amazed that the situation unfolded as it did, but it was dark so we couldn't see the sky, it was the 60's and weather predictions weren't as up-to-date, and the only weather we got was on the evening news, no weather-alert radios or automated phone notifications. So we were just blithely sweltering in the house, Mom trying to push us kids toward bed, when the situation turned crazy.
The outside air had been completely still until suddenly the wind came up ...strong! The house was open and it was beginning to rain, so we were scrambling to close windows and secure the place. Mom headed out into the attached garage to close down the garage door, telling Connie and I to close the bedroom windows. (At this point in the story I see Auntie Em in the Wizard of Oz trying to get everyone safe in the path of the oncoming tornado!)
We headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms, arriving at the spot where the doors opened into separate bedrooms. The most unbelievable roar greeted us there. 50+ years later I can still hear the unearthly howl of the wind. At the time Connie and I would have been 8 and 10 years of age so we had no understanding of what was happening, all we knew is that we were very scared.
We both share the same recollection, although neither of us knows to this day exactly what transpired. We threw our arms around each other, screaming in each other's ears, terrified and confused. We both remember the feeling of bumping the top of our heads, but to this day we are unsure whether we were lifted off the floor and hit our heads on the ceiling or if there was a downward pressure that made it feel that way. This seemed to go on for a long time but in reality I'm sure it was less than a minute. Our perception of time is skewed at this point.
Needless to say, Mom came rushing back into the house to gather her little chicks and take us all to the basement. What a terrifying experience for a young mother!
Just as quickly as the wind came up and the roar commenced, it was over, leaving behind an eerie calm. It was time to survey the aftermath and try to make sense of what had happened.
We had experienced a tornado! It came from the southwest, right through our backyard, narrowly missing the northwest corner of the house. It bounced around in our yard, picking up our swing set and BBQ grill as it went, relocating the neighbor's garage a few feet off the foundation, destroying another neighbor's storage shed, then headed north down the street where it spit out the swings and grill.
During that summer, Dad was in the process of having a new shop built, a steel structure, about 2 blocks north of our house, currently known as the Springview Implement. He and a friend were at the building site checking on progress when the weather got wild. Instinct told them to get out, so they ran for their vehicles, getting inside just as the tornado hit the building, flinging steel siding every which way. The building was a mass of twisted steel in a few short minutes, but fortunately they weren't hurt.
The tornado then skipped through town doing very little more damage but depositing the steel from the shed here and there before moving on. We were left with the feeling that we had been targeted by that tornado as it almost got our house and demolished the partially finished shop building.
That experience, while too close for comfort, didn't really make me appreciate the gravity of what could have been. We were too young to realize that we could have lost our home and our lives. But you can be sure that when there are tornado warnings issued I have an eye to the sky.
It's kind of a local joke about the tornado siren...it is supposedly our notification to run outside and see what's coming! And yes, this is what I do! However, I also recognize the danger that comes with a tornado and am always ready to head to the basement. Just because it's been 54 years since a tornado zigzagged through Springview doesn't mean it can't happen again.
So, in this year which has brought so many natural disasters along with death and destruction, we are so thankful to be high and dry as well as not blown away in a tornado. And we think of those whose lives are forever changed through wild and crazy weather phenomenon and pray that they can get their lives back to some semblance of normal.
PS. The whole time I wrote this I hummed tunes from the Wizard of Oz!
When it comes to hurricanes, I am always thankful that a hurricane is an impossibility for us in the central United States. The most we reap from a hurricane is an occasional rainy spell that was fed by the storms on the coasts...and in Nebraska a rainy day is a good day! However, even though hurricanes are unlikely, we are susceptible to other types of storms. Following is a story from one of those times:
Our little town has a great fire and rescue team. If you need an ambulance, a team of trained EMT's will show up, medical bags in hand, to be sure you get taken safely to the hospital. If your house is on fire, they are there to dampen down the flames. And if there is a pending tornado, the sirens will ring! The whole tornado siren thing is a newer addition to their services, but not in 1963 when our world got a bit of a shaking.
It was a Saturday evening, June 8th to be exact. It had been a hot day, and the evening wasn't really cooling things off much either. Dad was out and about, and Mom was home with us kids. It was the kind of hot and sticky that just made the house seem stifling...we apparently didn't have air-conditioning at the time because the house was open.
I am now amazed that the situation unfolded as it did, but it was dark so we couldn't see the sky, it was the 60's and weather predictions weren't as up-to-date, and the only weather we got was on the evening news, no weather-alert radios or automated phone notifications. So we were just blithely sweltering in the house, Mom trying to push us kids toward bed, when the situation turned crazy.
The outside air had been completely still until suddenly the wind came up ...strong! The house was open and it was beginning to rain, so we were scrambling to close windows and secure the place. Mom headed out into the attached garage to close down the garage door, telling Connie and I to close the bedroom windows. (At this point in the story I see Auntie Em in the Wizard of Oz trying to get everyone safe in the path of the oncoming tornado!)
We headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms, arriving at the spot where the doors opened into separate bedrooms. The most unbelievable roar greeted us there. 50+ years later I can still hear the unearthly howl of the wind. At the time Connie and I would have been 8 and 10 years of age so we had no understanding of what was happening, all we knew is that we were very scared.
We both share the same recollection, although neither of us knows to this day exactly what transpired. We threw our arms around each other, screaming in each other's ears, terrified and confused. We both remember the feeling of bumping the top of our heads, but to this day we are unsure whether we were lifted off the floor and hit our heads on the ceiling or if there was a downward pressure that made it feel that way. This seemed to go on for a long time but in reality I'm sure it was less than a minute. Our perception of time is skewed at this point.
Needless to say, Mom came rushing back into the house to gather her little chicks and take us all to the basement. What a terrifying experience for a young mother!
Just as quickly as the wind came up and the roar commenced, it was over, leaving behind an eerie calm. It was time to survey the aftermath and try to make sense of what had happened.
We had experienced a tornado! It came from the southwest, right through our backyard, narrowly missing the northwest corner of the house. It bounced around in our yard, picking up our swing set and BBQ grill as it went, relocating the neighbor's garage a few feet off the foundation, destroying another neighbor's storage shed, then headed north down the street where it spit out the swings and grill.
During that summer, Dad was in the process of having a new shop built, a steel structure, about 2 blocks north of our house, currently known as the Springview Implement. He and a friend were at the building site checking on progress when the weather got wild. Instinct told them to get out, so they ran for their vehicles, getting inside just as the tornado hit the building, flinging steel siding every which way. The building was a mass of twisted steel in a few short minutes, but fortunately they weren't hurt.
The tornado then skipped through town doing very little more damage but depositing the steel from the shed here and there before moving on. We were left with the feeling that we had been targeted by that tornado as it almost got our house and demolished the partially finished shop building.
That experience, while too close for comfort, didn't really make me appreciate the gravity of what could have been. We were too young to realize that we could have lost our home and our lives. But you can be sure that when there are tornado warnings issued I have an eye to the sky.
It's kind of a local joke about the tornado siren...it is supposedly our notification to run outside and see what's coming! And yes, this is what I do! However, I also recognize the danger that comes with a tornado and am always ready to head to the basement. Just because it's been 54 years since a tornado zigzagged through Springview doesn't mean it can't happen again.
So, in this year which has brought so many natural disasters along with death and destruction, we are so thankful to be high and dry as well as not blown away in a tornado. And we think of those whose lives are forever changed through wild and crazy weather phenomenon and pray that they can get their lives back to some semblance of normal.
PS. The whole time I wrote this I hummed tunes from the Wizard of Oz!
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