Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? The jury’s still out on that, tonight’s contestant dropped out rather than tackle a fifth grade social studies question. So we don’t know, and we didn’t get to see the question to test ourselves. He ended up with $7,500 though, so that’s not too shabby.
That is of course, if that’s an after tax figure, which I kind of doubt now that I think about it. It would be nice if game shows did that, figure the tax owed and send it to Uncle, since they’re giving away that money anyway. But what I heard years ago is that the contestants owe the tax on the winnings.
Seems like a shame though. You get all excited that you’ve just won $7,500, only to discover that you end up with only thirteen dollars and eighty-five cents.
Much has happened since my last Porch post. The big news in Missouri was the Joplin tornado, back on May 22 nd. Much has been said and I don’t know what I can add…the whole event and aftermath was so tragic. My sister and her family lived in Joplin in the late 1980s, so I’m somewhat familiar with the city. That area will never look the same, and the recovery will be a long one. Rumor has it that our church will send some people down there, but I’m not sure of the details, whether soon for cleanup assistance, or later for help in rebuilding. I’m not sure how much I’d be able to do if I went down there, but I have the desire to help in some way, if I can.
The Kansas City Star last Sunday had an amazing article, a collection of first person reports of survivors at St. John’s Hospital and nearby.
Since then, we’ve had several rounds of rain and thunderstorms here, but they’ve only blown the tornado sirens once. No damage here, though.
My garden is doing well with the rain and the warm weather. I have several blossoms on the tomato plants, and the cucumber plants are growing well. We got the fence up, but it still needs adjustment to make it varmint proof. I’ll have to get to that before any fruit sets on the vines. The potato plants are bigger and healthier than any I’ve ever had. I guess we finally got enough compost worked into the soil in that corner.
Father’s Day was a simple celebration. What I really wanted was to get my family around the table all at once and play a board game; we haven’t done that in too long. So we chose Pictionary, and my second daughter and my son teamed up and ran away with the game. They ought to enter a tournament.
My first daughter called from California, which was a delight. I told her that was the high point of the day so far, and said I wasn’t sure that would stand because her mom had made me a peach cobbler. I did get to “talk” to my one year old granddaughter. It wasn’t real words yet, just sounds on her part. Practice talk.
As it turned out, the cobbler was great, but I’ll rate the phone call the high point of the day.
Of course I thought of my Dad. The question came to mind, how would I respond if someone asked “What words of wisdom did your dad pass on to you?” I’m not sure how I’d reply, though I suppose if I give it some time and consideration, I'd come up with something. Dad was a very intelligent man, but also a quiet person most of the time. I’m sure he kept many things to himself, and yes, I should have asked more questions when I had the chance.
While my Mom gave me an appreciation for music and art, Dad passed to me his interest in things technical. His interest in aircraft became my interest in rocketry. And I have good memories of working side by side at his electronics workbench, putting together some Heathkit project or other.
I’ve come to believe my odd sense of humor is about an equal mix of my Mom’s general good humor and creativity (sometimes moving across the line into silliness), and Dad’s quiet, unexpected, dry humor. Interesting that I’ve included comparisons with Mom into these comments about Dad. When I think of one, I think of the other…the way it should be, I suppose. Anyway, here’s what I’ve written before on Father’s Day, if you’re interested.
One of our digital TV subchannels, 9.2, changed formats today. It was one of two weather channels, but now it’s a MeTV affiliate. So far, I’m impressed. I’ve watched parts of The Streets Of San Francisco, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, the original Hawaii Five-Oh, M*A*S*H, and the Dick Van Dyke Show.
Rumor has it they also have The Beverly Hillbillies, but I don’t know in what time slot. I’ve also read on the internet that this fall they’ll be adding Star Trek (I assume it’s The Original Series).
And…Batman.
Who needs cable?
Oh, and happy Summer!
Showing posts with label tornadoes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tornadoes. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Happy Birthday, Mike!
It’s Mike’s birthday again, and boy did that year fly by! I spent some time earlier trying to think of something extra clever to post, but had a bit of writer’s block; other than to say that we got no mail today. So Mike, how did you get your birthday to be a postal holiday?
Anyway, instead of trying to come up with something new, how about something old.
I have good memories of the times my family and I would travel to Poppy’s farm in the Ozarks. Usually we’d stay a week, a few times almost two. Always there would be a day or two when Mike’s family would drive over from Branson. If the weather was good, and it usually was, we’d divide our time inside the house and outside in the yard. We could always come up with something to do, even if it was just to look at comics and crack each other up with jokes.
One year we came up with a club, the Human Bean Club. We tied a rope between two closely spaced trees and put an old blanket across the top, weighted down with a few rocks at the bottom; that was our HBC tent. A flag was hastily made with a sheet of paper, colored with crayons (probably from that box of smoky crayons I'd bought at a dime store in Forsyth that had a fire sale). This was - I think - 1964 or 1965. We agreed that having a club had merit, and eventually play money was made and I think membership cards (I can't prove the latter from the archives though). The HBC club lasted over a year, maybe almost two years.
Sometimes I was invited to Mike's house to spend the night, and the hours would fly by. Paper, pens and pencils were an absolutely necessity, and the "creativity" (silliness) would begin. The cartoons I'd draw would usually involve characters I'd make up with oval shaped bodies, hastily drawn hands and odd eyes, big honkin' tennis shoes and messy hair. The plots usually involved trying to outrun a tornado, or were a setup for some pun or play on words. In later years, I came up with one truly odd attempt to build a storyline combining elements of Star Trek, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hogan's Heroes (hillbillies hiding from the rev'noors in underground tunnels, firing a phaser-like weapon to freeze an approaching tornado). If it was late enough and you were sleep deprived, it almost made sense. Kind of.
Mike had his own character, Fuzz-Man, whose special power was that he could attract lint and expand to giant size. Useful when dealing with his arch-enemies, Captain Endust, and the giant vacuum cleaner. Sometimes Mike would draw an already established super hero, usually Batman. Most of my stuff was just odd humor, but Mike's superhero themes inspired me to come up with Jello-Man. That character had worked in the Jello factory and one day had accidentally fallen into the vat of grape Jello (I had a purple pencil). Now that he was a shape-shifter, Jello-Man could thin himself out and ooze under the door when he accidentally locked himself out of his apartment. And he could also...hmmm...well, what else? I'll get back to you on that one. Someday.
Later and later it would get. We'd try to keep the laughter to a minimum as we passed the cartoons back and forth. We'd always get shushed once or twice from Mike's mom or dad. The stuff they put up with.
Once we got into foreign languages. Mike knew some German, and I had learned some French in class. We'd write the foreign words, then the translation. The sillier the better; things such as "I don't understand the beach", and "When will the potato sing"?
Once in a while we'd get philosophical. I had realized something that had troubled me a bit. At the time, M&Ms came in red, orange, yellow, green and brown. We'd been on a completely different subject, so I sprang it on him.
"Mike, why are there no blue M&M's"? We had a good laugh over that and pondered what we could do. We decided we ought to send the company a telegram:
DEAR M AND MS STOP WHY NO BLUE STOP
I wish we'd followed through and actually sent that, but neither of us quite had the nerve. But as we all know there have been blue (and purple) M&Ms for some years now, so they must have gotten the message somehow.
Once or twice we stayed up late enough that we heard the newspaper hit the front step. Mike would go out and bring it in, and we'd head straight for the comics page.
We had to be among the first in town to read the days comic strips in the Branson Beacon. Got a jump on most everybody else. That felt good. Then we'd finally get a few hours sleep, and pretty much be worthless for the rest of the day.
Mike, I hope you had a great day and made more fun memories!
(I'd like to read a response to this...I know I left stuff out.)
Anyway, instead of trying to come up with something new, how about something old.
I have good memories of the times my family and I would travel to Poppy’s farm in the Ozarks. Usually we’d stay a week, a few times almost two. Always there would be a day or two when Mike’s family would drive over from Branson. If the weather was good, and it usually was, we’d divide our time inside the house and outside in the yard. We could always come up with something to do, even if it was just to look at comics and crack each other up with jokes.
One year we came up with a club, the Human Bean Club. We tied a rope between two closely spaced trees and put an old blanket across the top, weighted down with a few rocks at the bottom; that was our HBC tent. A flag was hastily made with a sheet of paper, colored with crayons (probably from that box of smoky crayons I'd bought at a dime store in Forsyth that had a fire sale). This was - I think - 1964 or 1965. We agreed that having a club had merit, and eventually play money was made and I think membership cards (I can't prove the latter from the archives though). The HBC club lasted over a year, maybe almost two years.
Sometimes I was invited to Mike's house to spend the night, and the hours would fly by. Paper, pens and pencils were an absolutely necessity, and the "creativity" (silliness) would begin. The cartoons I'd draw would usually involve characters I'd make up with oval shaped bodies, hastily drawn hands and odd eyes, big honkin' tennis shoes and messy hair. The plots usually involved trying to outrun a tornado, or were a setup for some pun or play on words. In later years, I came up with one truly odd attempt to build a storyline combining elements of Star Trek, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hogan's Heroes (hillbillies hiding from the rev'noors in underground tunnels, firing a phaser-like weapon to freeze an approaching tornado). If it was late enough and you were sleep deprived, it almost made sense. Kind of.
Mike had his own character, Fuzz-Man, whose special power was that he could attract lint and expand to giant size. Useful when dealing with his arch-enemies, Captain Endust, and the giant vacuum cleaner. Sometimes Mike would draw an already established super hero, usually Batman. Most of my stuff was just odd humor, but Mike's superhero themes inspired me to come up with Jello-Man. That character had worked in the Jello factory and one day had accidentally fallen into the vat of grape Jello (I had a purple pencil). Now that he was a shape-shifter, Jello-Man could thin himself out and ooze under the door when he accidentally locked himself out of his apartment. And he could also...hmmm...well, what else? I'll get back to you on that one. Someday.
Later and later it would get. We'd try to keep the laughter to a minimum as we passed the cartoons back and forth. We'd always get shushed once or twice from Mike's mom or dad. The stuff they put up with.
Once we got into foreign languages. Mike knew some German, and I had learned some French in class. We'd write the foreign words, then the translation. The sillier the better; things such as "I don't understand the beach", and "When will the potato sing"?
Once in a while we'd get philosophical. I had realized something that had troubled me a bit. At the time, M&Ms came in red, orange, yellow, green and brown. We'd been on a completely different subject, so I sprang it on him.
"Mike, why are there no blue M&M's"? We had a good laugh over that and pondered what we could do. We decided we ought to send the company a telegram:
DEAR M AND MS STOP WHY NO BLUE STOP
I wish we'd followed through and actually sent that, but neither of us quite had the nerve. But as we all know there have been blue (and purple) M&Ms for some years now, so they must have gotten the message somehow.
Once or twice we stayed up late enough that we heard the newspaper hit the front step. Mike would go out and bring it in, and we'd head straight for the comics page.
We had to be among the first in town to read the days comic strips in the Branson Beacon. Got a jump on most everybody else. That felt good. Then we'd finally get a few hours sleep, and pretty much be worthless for the rest of the day.
Mike, I hope you had a great day and made more fun memories!
(I'd like to read a response to this...I know I left stuff out.)
Monday, April 27, 2009
The Evening Rambler for April 27, 2009
Happy Samuel Morse birthday!
The way my computer is set up now, on my way to my Yahoo page, I first go through the Google page. I use Google sometimes, but being the creature of habit that I am, I'm used to my Yahoo setup.
Here's how the Google logo looked today.
Well I thought it was neat, anyway. I was reminded of the times I studied Morse Code with my dad. For those who don't know, he was an amateur (ham) radio operator.
So I could read "GOOGLE" right off (and if I close my eyes I can imagine hearing it at five words per minute). So, what's the occasion, the anniversary of the invention of the telegraph? A quick roll of the mouse, and the comment Samuel Morse birthday appeared.
Let's all say some "dits" and "dahs" for Mr. Morse.
Leavenworth County Tornado
The weather turned severe two counties to the west of us on Saturday afternoon. I happened to turn on the tv as one of the news helicopters was showing live video from near the storm. No luck finding that clip to link to here, unfortunately.
The rotating wall cloud was evident, and the funnel was already starting down, then it would appear to stop, raise back up, pause, and then head down again. What I'm told is that usually the funnel is twice as far down as it looks, as the condensation darkens the upper part from the top down. The funnel continued to lengthen when suddenly in the blink of an eye, there was the tornado all the way to the ground. Just that quickly.
I got excited "You oughta see this", which brought my son into the room (I'm sure he was thinking "What's with dad?"). I told him, "See, that's just how they look!".
Well, duh. Now that I think back on it, that was a bit obvious.
The tornado persisted and tracked through a rural area, damaging some houses and destroying a few barns. As a precaution, people were evacuated from the Kansas Speedway and some of the local shopping areas in Kansas City, Kansas. Thankfully, no serious injuries or deaths due to the tornado (I heard there was one lightning fatality, though).
But...the ability to watch live coverage of a tornado forming two counties away...what a world.
"To save them, we have to eat them."
A strange statement, that. While I was trying to find that tornado video, I came across this, and found it interesting. I wasn't aware there were endangered breeds of chickens.
I'm all for clean air and water, not littering, that sort of thing. But I've never been all that gung-ho for environmentalism for It's Own Sake; when it's the be all and end all of some political movement or a religion of sorts.
But it would be a shame for some of those breeds of chickens to go extinct. Another quote:
"At least 19 heritage breeds, such as the white Delaware with the mottled neck, the white-egg laying Holland and black mottled Houdan, have been designated as critically threatened, which means there are fewer than 500 left. Dozens of others are in danger of disappearing without a market to sustain them." (italics mine)
That reminds me of something I heard of Rush Limbaugh's radio show once. Something to the effect that if you want to protect an endangered species, the best way to do that would be to allow the endangered animal to be raised for food. The market would make sure there was a plentiful supply.
Finally...
Hats off to cousin Dolores, who had the correct answer for the latest music lyric game challenge. Check back on The Porch soon for a new challenge!
The way my computer is set up now, on my way to my Yahoo page, I first go through the Google page. I use Google sometimes, but being the creature of habit that I am, I'm used to my Yahoo setup.
Here's how the Google logo looked today.
Well I thought it was neat, anyway. I was reminded of the times I studied Morse Code with my dad. For those who don't know, he was an amateur (ham) radio operator.
So I could read "GOOGLE" right off (and if I close my eyes I can imagine hearing it at five words per minute). So, what's the occasion, the anniversary of the invention of the telegraph? A quick roll of the mouse, and the comment Samuel Morse birthday appeared.
Let's all say some "dits" and "dahs" for Mr. Morse.
Leavenworth County Tornado
The weather turned severe two counties to the west of us on Saturday afternoon. I happened to turn on the tv as one of the news helicopters was showing live video from near the storm. No luck finding that clip to link to here, unfortunately.
The rotating wall cloud was evident, and the funnel was already starting down, then it would appear to stop, raise back up, pause, and then head down again. What I'm told is that usually the funnel is twice as far down as it looks, as the condensation darkens the upper part from the top down. The funnel continued to lengthen when suddenly in the blink of an eye, there was the tornado all the way to the ground. Just that quickly.
I got excited "You oughta see this", which brought my son into the room (I'm sure he was thinking "What's with dad?"). I told him, "See, that's just how they look!".
Well, duh. Now that I think back on it, that was a bit obvious.
The tornado persisted and tracked through a rural area, damaging some houses and destroying a few barns. As a precaution, people were evacuated from the Kansas Speedway and some of the local shopping areas in Kansas City, Kansas. Thankfully, no serious injuries or deaths due to the tornado (I heard there was one lightning fatality, though).
But...the ability to watch live coverage of a tornado forming two counties away...what a world.
"To save them, we have to eat them."
A strange statement, that. While I was trying to find that tornado video, I came across this, and found it interesting. I wasn't aware there were endangered breeds of chickens.
I'm all for clean air and water, not littering, that sort of thing. But I've never been all that gung-ho for environmentalism for It's Own Sake; when it's the be all and end all of some political movement or a religion of sorts.
But it would be a shame for some of those breeds of chickens to go extinct. Another quote:
"At least 19 heritage breeds, such as the white Delaware with the mottled neck, the white-egg laying Holland and black mottled Houdan, have been designated as critically threatened, which means there are fewer than 500 left. Dozens of others are in danger of disappearing without a market to sustain them." (italics mine)
That reminds me of something I heard of Rush Limbaugh's radio show once. Something to the effect that if you want to protect an endangered species, the best way to do that would be to allow the endangered animal to be raised for food. The market would make sure there was a plentiful supply.
Finally...
Hats off to cousin Dolores, who had the correct answer for the latest music lyric game challenge. Check back on The Porch soon for a new challenge!
Friday, February 13, 2009
Back at my computer keyboard, with some old memories
Well I’m back, and it’s great to have a working computer at home again. (Obligatory comment: it’s funny how much we depend on computers now, and just a few years ago whether or not you had a computer wasn’t all that much of an issue.)
And thanks Mike for your posts - though I'm still not quite sure what to make of the last one. Interesting...um, yeah, that's it.
Anyway, while the compy was in the shop, I made various trips to two of the local libraries, the Mid-Continent Library South Independence branch, and the Kansas City Library Trails West branch, for internet access.
Changing the subject…
While at Trails West, I noticed a book display “Of Local Interest”. Here’s the one that caught my attention…
…so I checked out and read “Caught In the Path” by Carolyn Glenn Brewer. I’ll not attempt to make a full fledged book review; the comments on Amazon.com (where I found this photo) describe the book well. (By the way, the cover photo is of the tornado when it was out in the country near Spring Hill, Kansas, before it crossed into Missouri to wreak destruction in Martin City, Hickman Mills, and Ruskin Heights). I found other photos online from a NOAA site, so if you’re curious you can click and see what the tornado looked like from the Ottawa Kansas airport, a wider view of the book cover photo - note the multiple funnels – near Spring Hill, and the destruction of the Ruskin High School, the path through Ruskin Heights, and a close-up showing concrete slabs and debris.
If you’re expecting loads of technical terms, diagrams, and textbook explanations of how tornadoes form, that’s not what this book is about. The stories here are personal eyewitness accounts of people in the path, where they hid to ride out the storm, including one account of a survivor caught outdoors, who was briefly inside the funnel. The book is all the more fascinating for the personal touch. The last half of “Caught In the Path” details how individuals coped with the aftermath; finding family members, the cleanup, and how they pulled together as a community to rebuild.
A few things I found interesting…
I read some old, everyday expressions I haven’t encountered in years. One woman described what she had been doing just before the tornado hit, she had been “sprinkling clothes”. I remember my mom doing that as part of the ironing process…before steam irons were common. Later in the book, after the storm, another lady mentioned seeing a “fire wagon” drive down the street. I haven’t heard them called anything but fire engines or fire trucks for decades now.
I was reminded of some of the bad old tornado safety advice, which was thought to be good advice at the time. Some people wasted time opening windows to “equalize the pressure”, and didn’t quite get to the safest shelter in time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them. We were all told to do that for years, until the weather experts studied enough tornado damage to conclude it didn’t help, and the extra time spent would just put you at risk.
Also, there was one mention of a family who intended to get to the southwest corner of the basement, but didn’t quite get there…fortunately, as it turned out. Most of their house collapsed into that corner, and they would have been crushed. For many years we were told the southwest corner of the basement was the safest place, but the more recent advice I’ve heard is to get under a sturdy table or workbench, in a basement closet if you have one, or under the stairway if there’s an opening. These places offer better protection from falling debris.
Understandably, survivors separated from family members were in a state of panic, trying to find their loved ones. It struck me how difficult it was for people to find a working telephone, how many blocks they had to walk, to let relatives or friends outside the damaged area know they were all right. I suppose that today if an F5 tornado hit enough cell phone towers that could still be an issue. But I suspect with the narrowness of a tornado’s path (intense destruction, but not widespread like a hurricane), that most cell phone repeaters would still function, and it would be easier and quicker now to contact people afterward, than it was back then.
Except for my time away at college, I’ve lived in the Kansas City area my entire life. So in the book I recognized the names of several local television and radio personalities, Walt Bodine, Randall Jesse, Charles Gray, Joe Kramer, Bill Leeds, and also that of Kansas City mayor H. Roe Bartle.
May 20, 1957 - What I remember
On a personal note, I was only 3 1/2 years old at the time, but I distinctly remember that storm and I doubt that I’ll ever forget it. We lived in the Maywood neighborhood at the time, now part of Independence, Missouri. So, not only did the tornado miss us by several miles, but I don’t recall any hail damage either (of course, while the storm was in progress we didn’t know that the tornado would miss us). It was a tremendously strong thunderstorm, with a great deal of thunder and lightning, and it really poured too.
Since that night, on occasion the story of the Ruskin Heights tornado has come up in our family. My sister Connie has told of something she and our mom had done earlier that day. Apparently the early part of the day was really nice (I don’t remember that part), and they had planted some flower seeds. Later on none of those flowers came up; the downpour from the storm was strong enough that it washed away all of the seeds.
Anyway, I don’t recall being scared of the storm at first. We had the TV on, and I was sitting up on the top of the couch with my back against the wall; enjoying the loud thunder and the flashes of lightning. It would have been about time for the usual TV routine, news, weather, and sports. But it was all about the weather, and the weatherman seemed more anxious than usual. Still that didn’t really register with me, until my folks started to get nervous. Someone called to me to come down, and I remember thinking I was about to get in trouble for sitting on top of the back of the couch. So I slid down to sit in the couch the right way with my back against the cushion.
About then the rest of the family “freaked out” for want of a better word. This was the first time I had ever seen my folks, or for that matter any adult, really alarmed about anything, and that’s what I remember most about that night. Someone shouted to me to get to the basement. I was still enjoying watching the TV and hearing the thunder, and I really didn’t want to go to the basement.
Allow me to backtrack for a bit to explain my aversion to that basement. First of all, to get down there one of the adults had to lift the door up from the back porch floor, which was weird enough; then we could walk down the steps. The point here is that I really, really didn’t like being in the basement of that old house. The walls were rough like stone, and it always seemed damp down there. The only other thing besides my dad’s workbenches was a big, old furnace (maybe a water heater too, but I don’t really recall where that was). The furnace had a round window where you could look in and see the flame of the pilot light; a huge, old, noisy, scary furnace with a mean looking glowing eye. It seemed that way to me when I was three, anyway.
When I didn’t get off the couch right away, mom or dad (I don’t recall for sure who) came and grabbed me. I remember being led by the hand, and I may have been picked up and carried part of the way (I’m a little vague on that detail). My sister, our parents, and I stayed in that old damp basement until the storm let up.
So, no damage in our neighborhood, but we saw pictures of the destruction on the TV and in the Kansas City Star. One thing mentioned in “Caught In the Path” that I remember hearing when I was a kid, was the trouble the sheriff’s deputies, police, and National Guard had in keeping sightseers away, so the rescue and cleanup efforts wouldn’t be hindered.
Two weeks later, my grandpa Wingate from Ohio came for a visit, and to celebrate his birthday. He had heard about the tornado, and wanted to go see the path it took through that neighborhood. By then the roads were clear and the Guard didn’t stop us from driving through. I vaguely remember seeing a lot of torn up stuff lying in yards, and Connie remembers seeing what remained of the Ruskin High gymnasium. When that had been built, along the outer brick wall were installed individual aluminum letters, spelling out RUSKIN. After the tornado, what was left spelled RU IN. In later years I remember seeing a newspaper photo of that sign.
If the weathermen had been shy about tornado warnings before, they sure weren’t after. I’ve been told that they overdid it for a while, that sometimes warnings would go out for what turned out to be just a big black rain cloud. I think everyone became more aware of what could happen during severe weather season, but all I know for certain is that I grew up in tornado alley and became fascinated with storms. As a kid, I learned that tornadoes came and went, and that there had been many, and would be many more. For years though, you would sometimes hear someone refer to The Tornado. Everyone around here knew which one that meant.
I also learned that the odds of seeing a tornado myself were low. “Tornado alley” covers a huge area, and most likely the next time one touched down, it would be many miles away. One spring (I think in 1964), a small tornado came near our grade school. The teachers hustled us off to one of the basement classrooms. At the end of the hallway was a big window, and I wanted to stay by the window in case it came around where I could see it. That wasn’t allowed, of course.
I did finally see one three or four years later, an F0 or weak F1 that actually struck the corner of our “new” house, right as it lifted back up into the clouds. That’s another story, so I’ll spare you lengthy detail; except to say the neighbors lost all the shingles off their roof, and we had some tree damage. My dad also had to replace a ham radio antenna. That’s the only one I’ve actually seen touch the ground, but I’ve seen a fair number of rotating wall clouds, and funnel clouds “part way down”. And most every year it seems tornadoes or funnel clouds will touch down or pass over part of our county, and we’ll hear the warning sirens blow.
Severe storms are fascinating to watch from a safe distance, but you have to respect the damage they can do.
And thanks Mike for your posts - though I'm still not quite sure what to make of the last one. Interesting...um, yeah, that's it.
Anyway, while the compy was in the shop, I made various trips to two of the local libraries, the Mid-Continent Library South Independence branch, and the Kansas City Library Trails West branch, for internet access.
Changing the subject…
While at Trails West, I noticed a book display “Of Local Interest”. Here’s the one that caught my attention…
…so I checked out and read “Caught In the Path” by Carolyn Glenn Brewer. I’ll not attempt to make a full fledged book review; the comments on Amazon.com (where I found this photo) describe the book well. (By the way, the cover photo is of the tornado when it was out in the country near Spring Hill, Kansas, before it crossed into Missouri to wreak destruction in Martin City, Hickman Mills, and Ruskin Heights). I found other photos online from a NOAA site, so if you’re curious you can click and see what the tornado looked like from the Ottawa Kansas airport, a wider view of the book cover photo - note the multiple funnels – near Spring Hill, and the destruction of the Ruskin High School, the path through Ruskin Heights, and a close-up showing concrete slabs and debris.
If you’re expecting loads of technical terms, diagrams, and textbook explanations of how tornadoes form, that’s not what this book is about. The stories here are personal eyewitness accounts of people in the path, where they hid to ride out the storm, including one account of a survivor caught outdoors, who was briefly inside the funnel. The book is all the more fascinating for the personal touch. The last half of “Caught In the Path” details how individuals coped with the aftermath; finding family members, the cleanup, and how they pulled together as a community to rebuild.
A few things I found interesting…
I read some old, everyday expressions I haven’t encountered in years. One woman described what she had been doing just before the tornado hit, she had been “sprinkling clothes”. I remember my mom doing that as part of the ironing process…before steam irons were common. Later in the book, after the storm, another lady mentioned seeing a “fire wagon” drive down the street. I haven’t heard them called anything but fire engines or fire trucks for decades now.
I was reminded of some of the bad old tornado safety advice, which was thought to be good advice at the time. Some people wasted time opening windows to “equalize the pressure”, and didn’t quite get to the safest shelter in time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them. We were all told to do that for years, until the weather experts studied enough tornado damage to conclude it didn’t help, and the extra time spent would just put you at risk.
Also, there was one mention of a family who intended to get to the southwest corner of the basement, but didn’t quite get there…fortunately, as it turned out. Most of their house collapsed into that corner, and they would have been crushed. For many years we were told the southwest corner of the basement was the safest place, but the more recent advice I’ve heard is to get under a sturdy table or workbench, in a basement closet if you have one, or under the stairway if there’s an opening. These places offer better protection from falling debris.
Understandably, survivors separated from family members were in a state of panic, trying to find their loved ones. It struck me how difficult it was for people to find a working telephone, how many blocks they had to walk, to let relatives or friends outside the damaged area know they were all right. I suppose that today if an F5 tornado hit enough cell phone towers that could still be an issue. But I suspect with the narrowness of a tornado’s path (intense destruction, but not widespread like a hurricane), that most cell phone repeaters would still function, and it would be easier and quicker now to contact people afterward, than it was back then.
Except for my time away at college, I’ve lived in the Kansas City area my entire life. So in the book I recognized the names of several local television and radio personalities, Walt Bodine, Randall Jesse, Charles Gray, Joe Kramer, Bill Leeds, and also that of Kansas City mayor H. Roe Bartle.
May 20, 1957 - What I remember
On a personal note, I was only 3 1/2 years old at the time, but I distinctly remember that storm and I doubt that I’ll ever forget it. We lived in the Maywood neighborhood at the time, now part of Independence, Missouri. So, not only did the tornado miss us by several miles, but I don’t recall any hail damage either (of course, while the storm was in progress we didn’t know that the tornado would miss us). It was a tremendously strong thunderstorm, with a great deal of thunder and lightning, and it really poured too.
Since that night, on occasion the story of the Ruskin Heights tornado has come up in our family. My sister Connie has told of something she and our mom had done earlier that day. Apparently the early part of the day was really nice (I don’t remember that part), and they had planted some flower seeds. Later on none of those flowers came up; the downpour from the storm was strong enough that it washed away all of the seeds.
Anyway, I don’t recall being scared of the storm at first. We had the TV on, and I was sitting up on the top of the couch with my back against the wall; enjoying the loud thunder and the flashes of lightning. It would have been about time for the usual TV routine, news, weather, and sports. But it was all about the weather, and the weatherman seemed more anxious than usual. Still that didn’t really register with me, until my folks started to get nervous. Someone called to me to come down, and I remember thinking I was about to get in trouble for sitting on top of the back of the couch. So I slid down to sit in the couch the right way with my back against the cushion.
About then the rest of the family “freaked out” for want of a better word. This was the first time I had ever seen my folks, or for that matter any adult, really alarmed about anything, and that’s what I remember most about that night. Someone shouted to me to get to the basement. I was still enjoying watching the TV and hearing the thunder, and I really didn’t want to go to the basement.
Allow me to backtrack for a bit to explain my aversion to that basement. First of all, to get down there one of the adults had to lift the door up from the back porch floor, which was weird enough; then we could walk down the steps. The point here is that I really, really didn’t like being in the basement of that old house. The walls were rough like stone, and it always seemed damp down there. The only other thing besides my dad’s workbenches was a big, old furnace (maybe a water heater too, but I don’t really recall where that was). The furnace had a round window where you could look in and see the flame of the pilot light; a huge, old, noisy, scary furnace with a mean looking glowing eye. It seemed that way to me when I was three, anyway.
When I didn’t get off the couch right away, mom or dad (I don’t recall for sure who) came and grabbed me. I remember being led by the hand, and I may have been picked up and carried part of the way (I’m a little vague on that detail). My sister, our parents, and I stayed in that old damp basement until the storm let up.
So, no damage in our neighborhood, but we saw pictures of the destruction on the TV and in the Kansas City Star. One thing mentioned in “Caught In the Path” that I remember hearing when I was a kid, was the trouble the sheriff’s deputies, police, and National Guard had in keeping sightseers away, so the rescue and cleanup efforts wouldn’t be hindered.
Two weeks later, my grandpa Wingate from Ohio came for a visit, and to celebrate his birthday. He had heard about the tornado, and wanted to go see the path it took through that neighborhood. By then the roads were clear and the Guard didn’t stop us from driving through. I vaguely remember seeing a lot of torn up stuff lying in yards, and Connie remembers seeing what remained of the Ruskin High gymnasium. When that had been built, along the outer brick wall were installed individual aluminum letters, spelling out RUSKIN. After the tornado, what was left spelled RU IN. In later years I remember seeing a newspaper photo of that sign.
If the weathermen had been shy about tornado warnings before, they sure weren’t after. I’ve been told that they overdid it for a while, that sometimes warnings would go out for what turned out to be just a big black rain cloud. I think everyone became more aware of what could happen during severe weather season, but all I know for certain is that I grew up in tornado alley and became fascinated with storms. As a kid, I learned that tornadoes came and went, and that there had been many, and would be many more. For years though, you would sometimes hear someone refer to The Tornado. Everyone around here knew which one that meant.
I also learned that the odds of seeing a tornado myself were low. “Tornado alley” covers a huge area, and most likely the next time one touched down, it would be many miles away. One spring (I think in 1964), a small tornado came near our grade school. The teachers hustled us off to one of the basement classrooms. At the end of the hallway was a big window, and I wanted to stay by the window in case it came around where I could see it. That wasn’t allowed, of course.
I did finally see one three or four years later, an F0 or weak F1 that actually struck the corner of our “new” house, right as it lifted back up into the clouds. That’s another story, so I’ll spare you lengthy detail; except to say the neighbors lost all the shingles off their roof, and we had some tree damage. My dad also had to replace a ham radio antenna. That’s the only one I’ve actually seen touch the ground, but I’ve seen a fair number of rotating wall clouds, and funnel clouds “part way down”. And most every year it seems tornadoes or funnel clouds will touch down or pass over part of our county, and we’ll hear the warning sirens blow.
Severe storms are fascinating to watch from a safe distance, but you have to respect the damage they can do.
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