Sharing a Slice of Life: #6 Summer Storms

Texasblu posted the meme for this Sunday as 'hearing about you or your family weathering out the storms'.  If you click on her name, you can read others stories also.

The story I have chosen has got to be a Hero story since it is also Sentimental Sunday.  At Christmas one year, while the Hero and Red Beard and the son had their own business, my
Aunt Lynn expressed that she wished that she could get some linoleum.  Well, uhmm, we were broke and it would be a 16 hour drive to take her back home and come back to our home.  Finances would only allow for that.  We talked about her desires and needs all the way back home through icy weather.
The next spring we decided that while we could not purchase linoleum for the floor, the guys could put down an acrylic flooring that they did because they had left overs from another job.  We could also paint the kitchen too.

When it was May and warm enough to make the trip with the little ones, we packed up and headed for her farm in Oklahoma.  She was so excited when we told her we were coming.  We arrived and what fun.  The little ones enjoyed the farm, the older ones loved doing something for Aunt Lynn.. Quickly the work was done. 


The day we were getting ready to leave, they got to have and 'Oklahoma experience'.  Everyone was packed or almost packed. Unknown to the rest of us, the Hero decided to bathe before we left.  As he was bathing, a storm suddenly appearing in the northwest.  There wasn't any warning, the winds picked up terrifically, the sky turned a blackish green, all of us rushed the little ones into the bedroom and snuggled them as close to the bed as possible.  The older ones remembered the tornado that demolished Aunt Lynn's house in the 50's (click Aunt Lynn to see that post). 

As things quieted down, we looked around and realized the Hero was not with us.  In a minute he came out smiling and said, "I just knew it was a tornado, and so I grabbed both sides of the tub and got ready to ride it out."  It still brings a giggle to me.
Intense weather moments tend to make you weak in the knees.  We have had many such times.

Oklahoma Tornado Memories 1954

1954, I was in the first grade. We had just moved to a new house that had plumbing. It was just about two miles from my Uncle Ernest and Aunt Lynn's home. ( There will be more stories about them later).
It was a great time of life...for a 6 year old. One night, my dad and I were sitting on the front
porch talking about going over and playing with my cousins Donald and Robert the next day. They were like brothers to me. I was an only child.
Then, looking off in the distance, my father got a very concerned look on his face. He yelled "Mary! Get to the cellar!" and ushered me to the cellar next to the house. My mom was slow on the uptake and he had to go back and get her. He had seen a funnel cloud forming to the west of our house. Strangely there wasn't a door on the cellar, so he tore the shelves at the back of the cellar off and pushed them against the opening to 'hold the "door" shut'. The wind was terrible and howled unmercifully. To this day the green clouds can turn my stomach into a panic mode.

When all became quiet again, we ventured out to find the trees laid low, and mangled. Our house was not harmed, but my dad went into overdrive worrying about our neighbors and my Aunt and Uncle. We were piled into the car and off we took in the rain. My heart was racing along with the car engine as we set out to check on everyone...

The scene of my Aunt and Uncle's home was enough to stop the heart.
This is a picture of my Uncle Ernest in front of what was left of their house. They lived next to a railroad track, had been inside and took the sound they heard to be a train coming. All of a sudden, the house began to implode around them. My Uncle was next to the bedroom door and the closet. The doors came together to shut him in a protected spot. My Aunt and cousins were in the dining room. She threw them on the floor and covered them with her body. The bricks from the chimney, fell just past her body. The house was removed from its foundation and set next to it. Leaving the cellar a gaping hole filled with all manner of debris. It was a good thing they were not down there. A huge oak in the back of the house had a straw be thrown into it, sticking out on either side...It was still there the last time I spent time there. Hearts were filled with great joy everyone was united, alive, scared to death, but unscathed.












My Aunt and Uncle are both gone now, but they embodied the preserving spirit. They rebuilt and continued to farm in tornado country. We moved.