Storms Part 1 - The Tornado

We were in the basement. The T.V. had sent out that alarm that would usually say, “This has been a test, only a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.” But instead, the voice had warned that a tornado had been spotted and had touched down in Southeast part of town.” We looked outside and it was eerily calm and still. And yellowish.  I was only 10 years old, but recognized an ominous scene when I saw one. Then we heard the train whistle noise. We had been warned about that in school.  It meant a tornado was very close by.

So, now we were huddled together. My father had grabbed the mattress off of my brother’s bed in the basement. (His hippie dream room, beaded curtains and all) All four children and my Mom and Dad crouched behind the mattress. We could hear the sounds of tree limbs cracking and falling, hard rain, wind, and unpleasant crunching of metal and wood. I was scared. My sister suddenly remembered that our cat, Scooter, was upstairs and vulnerable if the giant Oak in our front yard were to fall on the house. My Dad sprinted up the steps to make a rescue. He was back down with Scooter in record time. He said the limbs from the Oak tree were brushing against the bay window of the house. That means that the mighty Oak was in a battle for its life if it was being bent that far by the wind. And a few minutes later it was over. The rain stopped. The sun came out. And it was quiet, but the normal kind of quiet. Birds started chirping.

We came out from behind the mattress and made our way up the steep basement steps.  My father was a photographer for the local newspaper, so we knew he would immediately be outside to take photos of the damage. We all went outside to get a first-hand look at the situation. Our big Oak tree was fine and standing upright. Some little branches were scattered across the yard. Then an exclaim from my mother got our attention, “Oh, my word. Look at the Maddert’s house!” First I saw that an entire tree had been ripped from the ground roots and all. I couldn’t believe that wind, nothing more than  moving air, could have so much power as to actually pull a tree out of the ground like a plucked carrot. Even more convincing of the storms power was that this trees roots laid beneath an asphalt driveway and the storm had pulled the roots right through the asphalt. As my eyes followed the trunk of the tree that ran at about a 45-degree angle, instead of straight up, I saw that it had landed squarely on top of the Maddert’s house. We knew they were OK, because they were already out surveying the damage themselves.

Dad snapped some shots and then he was off to drive around town and find more damage. Then it would be hours in the darkroom picking the best shots in time to make the afternoon deadline and get the scoop on the morning paper which wouldn’t be out until the following day.  Some neighborhood kids came down the street and said they were going to check out the woods. We joined them in the walk just across the next street where we always cut through a neighbor’s large yard and down the sloping hillside to the woods that I knew like the back of my hand. I can still vividly see an entire 3-D image of those woods in my head 45 years later. At the bottom of the slope was a split rail fence that we would go through or over. To the right was the only waterfall that I knew of in town. It cascaded over a dam, down a steep rocky path and then poured into the fast moving tributary creek that ran through the several acres of woods that I regularly played in .

At first it looked like the woods had remained undisturbed. But then one of the kids said, “Look at that tree.” Unlike the plucked tree in my neighbor’s yard, this tree was still standing up straight, but the top of the tree was gone. All that remained was a twisted spike at the top. It looked like the twister had hovered over this tree and turned the top like children twist the stem on an apple until it breaks free. I wondered if the tornado had counted the twists it took using the alphabet in order to discern the letter of the name of the boy or girl it would marry in the future. As we made our way down to the bridge that crossed the creek, we saw more damage. And then we realized the bridge was gone as well. Posts with chains dangling from them remained. And if we looked further down the creek we could see fragments of the wooden footbridge snagged on rocks holding fast against the unusually strong currents that the excessive rainfall had caused. On the other side of the creek there was a large sandy area where I often spent much of my time collecting mica and playing in the sand. Right in that spot, three trees had fallen into a perfect triangle across each other.  We would later name the framed in spot “sand circle.”

This part of the woods had been devastated and the storm had thinned the tree cover so much that we could see houses on the other side of the woods that had not been visible before.  We rock-hopped across the creek since the bridge was gone.  We followed the familiar paths to the various cool spots. Through the gully to the abandoned rock quarry. The damage was limited here. Then down the path to the left to check out skipper’s island. Not named for a ship’s Captain, but as a refuge for truants.  This part of the woods seemed fine. And then the opposite direction down the path that hugged the bank of the creek. My favorite part of this route was where the trail wound close to about a twenty foot drop off. A natural sort of damn lay at the bottom of that part of the creek and produced a deep mini-lake. This is the spot I would come to from the other side of the creek and sail boats made of sticks and leaves. 

Then on up a slope along the trail that brought us to the top of the waterfall on the other side from where we started. It seemed that the tornado had skipped around. It yanked hard on the tree just two doors down from my house. It twisted the top off a tree near the waterfall and must have carried it and dropped it somewhere else. It had decided to do most of the damage near the sandy bank at the turn in the creek near the old bridge. It had created a geometric piece of art using tree trunks and sand as its medium.

We couldn’t cross at the top of the dam that day. There was too much water rushing over. So, we made our way back to an easier crossing point. And then back home. Dad called when he was back at the paper to print what he had photographed. There had been lots of damage around the neighborhoods that I roamed freely about in those carefree days. Trees even fell on the rich people’s houses along Queens Road and throughout Eastover and Myers Park.  Most people would see the photos in the paper later that afternoon, but Dad brought home prints and contact sheets for us to look at.

Storms like this are momentous events that get branded into our memories in a way that is recallable with much more clarity than other memories from around the same time. Most of the days of my tenth year are completely buried in the recesses of my brain. This was the first of many literal and figurative storms to come. This storm was probably the first event I can remember that had a fundamental impact on my worldview. I gained respect for the power of the natural world. I saw how a few minutes could rearrange my world and alter it into something completely new. 

I don’t recall that anyone was hurt or killed by this storm. I remember it in a nostalgic way. It seems important in a symbolic sense. It’s as if the storm was perfectly timed to shake me from my childhood innocence and prepare me for the world that we all eventually realize can be a harsh place to live at times. It also provided me with context in which to value the normalcy of everyday life. And it perhaps it planted a seed in my psyche that change is inevitable and what may seem like a terrible event at the time can become an awesome memory that never goes away. If the storm had not happened, that entire year would now only exist as a blur of routine days lacking any clarity at all.

There would be more storms and they always seem to have a way of sweeping away one reality and replacing it with a new one.