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| Tornado Alley by � kanee I know, I know... if you talk about but the weather; you�re boring... unless you live in Oklahoma. God, I love Oklahoma. I have been accused of being a walking advertisement for why you should visit Oklahoma. I try to lure as many people as I can here just so I can have the pleasure of showing them the country that I love so much and seeing it through their eyes as well. It gives me great joy. One of the things that makes Oklahoma so �exciting� to me is our weather. There�s an old saying here that if you don�t like the weather, wait about five minutes, and it will change. Of course, it�s easy to forget that in the summer if we have 30 days or more of 100 plus degrees temps, or in the winter if we have a foot or more of snow on the ground for a couple of weeks. But the weather days I love the most are the days when the afternoons are stifling, suffocatingly hot and muggy chased away by a cold front that causes the temperature to suddenly plummet 30, 40, or 50 degrees within just a few hours, or even just one hour. It makes for interesting living... and interesting conversation. When I was still living at �home�, my father was the Captain of the Dewey Volunteer Rescue Squad. He was trained and had become an adept scuba diver in the Navy, was also a volunteer fireman, and a member of the Civil Defense. One of the purposes of the D.V.R.S. was to recover drowning victims. And because the section of Oklahoma we live in is known as the �land of the lakes�, there really was a need for such an operation, unfortunately. As a member of the Civil Defense, weather spotting was a major part of those duties because we lived in �tornado alley�. The van that my father and other members of the fire department custom converted into the Rescue Unit stayed parked in our front yard. If the call came that there had been a drowning, within minutes our home would be filled with somber men checking out scuba gear, while my mother filled thermoses with black coffee and made cheese sandwiches to send along. A fire call would find my baby brother in a frenzy, desperately digging in the toy box for his fireman�s hat, while my mother ran to start the car and have it running for Dad when he got there. A weather call usually wasn�t as urgent, as they would send Dad out well in advance of potential weather threats. This gave my mother plenty of time to load a change of clothing for each of five children and extra canned goods into the trunk of the car, where she always had an emergency kit ready... flash lights, radio, fresh batteries, blankets and water... and get us all bathed and in our pajamas before we went to spend the evening waiting out the storm at my grandparents home. During the height of tornado season, we pretty much lived out of the trunk of the car, it seemed. Although Mom was very nervous and antsy on these stormy evenings, for us, it was just a big pajama party. My grandfather had built a huge bomb shelter in the early 60�s, large enough to accommodate his very large family and offspring, and it doubled as a tornado shelter and fortunately was all it was ever needed for. So all of my aunts and uncles and cousins on my Mom�s side gathered there on �tornado nights� so that we could all use the shelter there, if need be. And more often that not, most of the closest neighbors around would �visit� as well. lol Always when we arrived there, Grandma would be baking something for the crowd that she knew was about to gather in her home. I don�t smell peach cobbler today without thinking of her and those wonderful evenings spent at her home riding out the storm. She would greet us at the door in her shirtwaist dress, flour sack apron, support hose (rolled down past her knees), hair net and rouge... MY! How Grandmother�s have changed! hehehe! She would send us off to the next room, admonishing us to be quiet so they could hear the latest weather reports above the radio�s static. We had so much fun sitting out there with all of our cousins, trying to giggle quietly, which just made us giggle more, hoping that the electricity would go out so we would be allowed to turn on the flashlights and tell ghost stories. If the tornado sirens went off, indicating a tornado approaching, our giggles turned to silence, sometimes tears, as we were quickly herded into the shelter. The shelter was damp, cold, musty, and echoed. The adults would have already taken all their important papers and emergency supplies down there, and if it was very late, they would have set up cots for us to sleep on. The storms raged loudly against the metal door and the wind whistled and howled relentlessly through the air vents. I learned that a raging storm, suddenly gone silent, followed by extremely high winds, rain and especially hail, would often result in the tornado sirens sounding, sometimes followed by the smell of sulphur and that deafening train-like roar that caused all the adults to become very quiet and hold on to us very tightly. That�s also when Grandpa would pass around a box of miniature �Tootsie Rolls�, in an attempt to comfort us with chocolate. Smart man, HE was. hehehe! I know it probably sounds strange, but those were just the best of times. Everybody gathering together, anxious and a little afraid, but confident in knowing that they were taking every precaution to be safe under the circumstances, brought us all closer together. And then there was always the worrying about Dad, if he was ok, usually positioned atop the highest hill with a CB, reporting to the local radio station and the Civil Defense, sitting alone in a vehicle... a known death trap during a tornado. It made us appreciate each other a little more... made us a little more thankful. We don�t have tornadoes here with the regularity that we did during the 60�s... the weather stream has changed a little. But during the height of tornado season, our lives still very much revolve around the weather. My little brother and I grew up but just could not grow very far from each other and chose to purchase homes next door to each other so that we could raise our children together. We don�t have a tornado shelter here (yet) but we still take every precaution taught us as kids and stormy evenings always found us gathered together in one of our homes. Many was a time I would receive a call from him from his work during the afternoon.... �Keep your eye to the sky.� That was the signal for me to tidy up and yes, bake something... it was tradition. Tidying up is a MUST because you want the house to look nice in case a tornado does come through, takes away half of your house, leaving the other half virtually untouched and open for public view and possibly winding up on the ten o�clock news. Fortunately, that has never happened, but by golly, I am always ready just in case it ever does. hehehe! I�ve had a lot of �firsts� in my life this past year. I lost my last living elder, my brother and his family moved away. There is nobody left here these days but my husband and I, our children and grandchildren... just the six of us compared to the dozens that used to be here. But we still do things the same, regardless. Now it is my husband who calls me from work asking if I am keeping my eye to the sky and offering to stop by Wal-Mart on his way home to pick up the Tootsie Rolls that come in a bag now instead of a box. Smart man, he is. |