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| This tornado hit Colorado August 20, 2006. No photo exists of the Walcott tornado |
A tornado struck near Walcott,
North Dakota, on this date in 1955. Although rated an F4 on the Fujita
scale, the National Weather Service claims that the tornado probably reached
the wind speed and size of an F5 several times before it dissipated. If true,
it would be one of only three F5 tornadoes to hit the state. Two people lost
their lives in the storm and many rural families lost their homes and farms.
Those who lived through the storm still remember the tornado’s fury.
****
My memory of this
storm, though with me daily, escalates a bit as the anniversary date approaches,
and escalates even more upon hearing of such devastations as the recent storm
in Moore, Oklahoma. I think especially of the children, and the fear I know they
felt—and will continue to feel—because I have been there.
This is a chapter
taken from my memoirs “Dying to Live.” Before this chapter I was talking about
my naval career and said, “Before I go on with my naval career I will
touch on one of the other most important things that ever happened to me. You remember that loud Bang! the very first
word in my story, well, you’re soon going to hear it again, only it’s louder,
much louder…and it was terrifying.”
It was July 2, 1955. I was
ten. Cool that morning but the afternoon
turned sweltering. My nephew, Curtis,
five, my very best friend at that time and who I considered almost my brother,
and I, had been cleaning out the south side of the tar paper-covered
garage. The plan is to set up a table or
two for our farms and toy soldiers. It
was a good plan.
By five-thirty we
had finished sweeping the dirt floor.
Mother calls supper. We head
in. Huge thunderheads are rising over
tall spruce trees in the southwest yard.
Rain sprinkles. Sunrays make
brittle contrast against the white house and dark clouds. Nothing about the changing weather seems
really serious but we hurry faster anyway.
We’ll be safe inside.
But my dog, Pal,
very small, somewhat Collie-like, stops, whines softly, then turns and lopes in
the opposite direction, toward her refuge under the hoghouse, where she has
raised several litters, and, as a puppy herself, hid on the day of her arrival
to the farm.
But it has rained
before and Pal has not gone to the hoghouse. (Did she already detect the changing
barometric pressure? Or was it the sixth
sense that some animals, and some people, have?) To Curtis and me, nothing seems serious. Nothing at all.
We slip through
the east porch door and are greeted by the squeal of 13-month-old Celi, my
niece and a jabbering bundle of smiles.
She sees us and, propelling herself with crossed legs and feet, comes
scooting over the floor on her bottom.
From the corner of
the porch floor, with crayons and paper, three-year-old Becky, another niece, a
beautiful and intelligent child with reddish-brown hair and bright blue eyes,
asks my mother, Lois, “I’m so hot, Grandma, can I take my dress off?” Without waiting for an answer she snatches
the hemline and peels it over her head.
She does look more refreshed in just panties, so Curtis and I remove our
shirts.
Later, all of us,
including my dad, Russell, and sister, Gerry, 16, sit to eat. A special affair tonight for Mother has just
returned from a Ladies’ aid bake sale.
Supper is mostly
finished by twenty to seven. Anxious to
counsel Pal, probably still cowering under the hoghouse, and also to move my
toys into the garage, I am first to leave the table. But upon reaching the porch I see a yellow
glow outside. Unexplainable dread stops
me.
The barn is about
thirty feet high and sixty feet long.
Beyond its peaked roof the sky is pale blue. The barn is bright red against the blue; its
silver cupola is gleaming. The yellow
glow fades. Outside begins to darken,
fast, yet the sky beyond the barn remains friendly-looking mid-summer
blue. Fears stabs at me as I hurry back
to the kitchen.
Everybody is
already up, standing silently at the double kitchen windows facing north, toward
where darkness is spreading, covering the farthest treetops quickly, as if a
sky monster is swallowing the sun. It is
so quiet. Nobody is talking, and outside
not even the sound of a bird.
Nothing. The quiet is so intense
it’s becoming a pressure beginning to hurt my ears.
A roar is becoming
apparent from the west, like a distant freight train, usually a pleasant sound
but now insidious, rumbling, approaching nearer and nearer, faster.
From where there
is no railroad.
“Boy, we’re going to
get an awful hailstorm,” Mother announces, “Hear that roar?”
“I think so too,”
Dad agrees.
But it’s more than
a roar. It’s a sound I’ve never heard,
nor imagined, and it’s beginning to terrify me.
It’s terrifying
all of us. We keep staring at the
silence and calm right outside, at the green of our farmyard, at the blue sky
where ragged fingers of black cloud are finally edging into view, looming over
our thought secure, tree-surrounded farmstead.
From the floor,
Celi, sensing terror from the rest of us, begins to whimper. Gerry immediately kneels and gathers the
usually happy baby into her arms.
“What’s a
hailstorm, Grandpa?” Curtis asks.
BANG!
The crash is the
east porch door, flung open. But there
is no wind. Outside is still absolute
silence, stillness except for the intensifying roar. Everybody gapes. Nobody knows what to do. Time is passing too quickly to be able to do
anything. Dad heads for the porch
door. Everybody watches him. Eyes wide, Curtis follows, “Grandpa, look at
your car!”
We press against
the kitchen windows. Outside the house
yard fence the car is bouncing up and down.
But it’s so calm outside.
We couldn’t know
that fluctuating pressure preceding the storm is making strange things happen seemingly
without substance. Dad didn’t know. Mother didn’t. Much too early in the century. The media blitz has not yet hit, consumer
weather forecasting is still in infancy.
Our communications is a radio not listened to during meals, a
hand-powered telephone not ringing.
But nobody in the
community yet knew either, for the storm had first formed several miles west in
uninhabited pasture, then the tornado that came from it had hopped and skipped
causing little damage, to escalate a mile west of our farm. There would be no warning. No time to get to the cellar. One entrance outside, another under linoleum
in the kitchen. And still we have no
realization we even need better shelter.
Like a balloon
filled, the pressurized car pushes its weakest point, a poorly latched door,
and pops it open.
“Mother, you
didn’t get the car door shut,” Dad exclaims, “Now it’ll blow open and break!”
Dad does not leave
the house to close the car door, for the unknown fear grips us all, but he does
step out slightly, grips the porch door, pulls it shut.
BANG!
It explodes right
open again, harder, seeming to shake the house.
The roar now seems right on top of us.
The trees north and west of the barn begin straining, leaning east as if
a mighty magnet pulls them, yet the house itself still feels no wind. Little Becky stands among us, as in
nonthinking awe we watch the trees bending so far as to touch the ground.
Then the barn and
other outlying buildings begin leaning east, again as if a magnet pulling in
slow-motion, not wind pushing.
Everything close is still so quiet.
Farther away everything is happening so fast, and it’s so hard to
believe, and accept. We still
have no full realization of a dangerous wind.
No realization we should do anything but stand, watch, in shock
believing that nothing so bad as what’s happening could really be
happening.
Suddenly the
unseen magnet is winning. Everything
beyond the house yard gate begins breaking apart, sending boards, shingles,
branches flying around and around. The
terrible roar now sounds like ten freight trains about to crash into the
house. The pressure in my ears feels
like I’m going under water.
The car door blows
open, then wrenches and twists itself around to the front windshield, then it’s
moving on its own across the yard. The
60-foot windmill, like a matchstick, topples east. The barn and granary roofs lift, and are
gone, disappeared. The barn, like a
stand of dominoes, collapses to the east, its siding and insides erupting like a
hail of arrows. Like a cardboard box,
the wooden granary rolls across the yard, west, opposite everything else.
An animal, small
and dark, hurries across the yard, toward the disintegrating barn, looking for
a place to hide. Pal! I know it’s Pal! But my mind cannot concentrate, cannot
conceive anything but recognition of my beloved pet. The image of her, small and frightened,
ingrains in my mind.
Pal disappears as
dirt and other flying objects fill the air.
Mindlessly I run for her. Dad grabs
me, returns me to where everyone has moved away from the window. We’re now clustered in the center of the
room. And still we continue witnessing,
dumb-like, the unimaginable disaster occurring outside.
Suddenly the house
is shaking, furiously. Dishes are
falling from cupboards, clattering, crashing, breaking.
“Everybody into
the west bedroom!” Dad shouts, then begins guiding us there. But I glance back. The east porch is breaking away from the
house. Wide-eyed Curtis is still there,
engraining more memory, then disappears into a curtain of dust and debris.
The rest of us
crowd into the small bedroom, my bedroom, where I’ve slept in safety all
my life, awakening happily to birthdays and tooth fairy visits. I look back once more. The kitchen linoleum has bubbled halfway to
the ceiling. The refrigerator is rocking
back and forth as if dancing, crazily.
Everything, everywhere, is moving, falling, breaking.
The horrible sound
outside is like a brutal sandblaster crunching the walls. The only other real sound is Celi in Gerry’s
arms, crying, not in paralyzed shock like the rest of us.
Everything outside
the west window is white, all white. The
house groans, cracks, moving and twisting beneath our feet.
“Here goes the
house.” Dad says it calmly, resigned,
for there is nothing he can do to stop it, nothing he could have done. No time.
No warning. No prior experience.
The house is
actually lifting into the air, doing the impossible...and breaking apart. The west window shrieks as it bursts from its
casing, smashes into my back, ending my awareness for I don’t know how long.
****
Even after 58 years, reading that first segment of
mine and my family’s own story always brings tears. I have to stop to wipe my
eyes and blow my nose. Again I think of the children of Moore,
Oklahoma, and
all the other children in harm’s way and the fear they feel, and the
helplessness of not being able to do a thing about it.
****
The next thing I
remember is continuous thunder and lightening.
Rain and hail is pouring in cold, terrifyingly-cold, torrents driven by
fierce straight wind...and my screaming voice, “God, I don’t want to die!”
From the
night-like darkness, sitting though with her back broken, comes my mother’s
voice, “Jimmy, you’re not going to die.”
Dad struggles from
the ground, pulls me up to sit, then stands, stares at an incinerated
landscape, “Everything is gone.”
Not a hole remains
where several huge boxelder trees stood south of the house. The now fenceless lawn is bare dirt,
scorched, as if a fire has swept by. The
few remaining trees on the outskirts of where the thick grove had been are
stripped of bark, and have a burned appearance.
No sign of buildings.
Nothing. Only smashed and
slivered boards.
The sound of
galloping hooves comes from the north.
The two black draft horses, Dixie and Daisy, are followed by ten
wild-eyed, panting milk cows, running not as fast but bucking, kicking, their
flopping udders swelled, unmilked, then are gone, disappearing into the gauze
of shock surrounding us. (Just days earlier a particularly mean Holstein
bull had been sold.)
From beneath a
section of wall comes Gerry’s cry for help.
Though his arm is cracked, Dad lifts it off as if cardboard. Then, strength gone, he sinks to the
ground. No grandchildren in sight. Nobody with the
strength or even presence of
mind to search for them.
“I’ll go get
help,” Gerry says, now sitting up.
“You can’t,” Dad
answers, “Where would you go?”
Still crying I
ask, “Daddy, are we in a dream?”
“No, Son. This is really happening.”
So we lay in the
cold and rubble of our farm with unknown injuries and dirt ground into our
skin, thinking—if thinking at all—that everybody would be like us, helpless,
that there would be no help.
Headlights appear
on the road. Always heavy foliage growth
had prevented seeing lights except in winter, but now the grove does not
exist. We watch the headlights until
they stop right in front of us.
“Where are the
children?” They ask.
Nobody knows. Three men have arrived. Art Blair, Dad’s cousin, and his visiting
sons, Woody and Johnny. They live one
mile north, have watched the tornado destroy the farm, and came as soon as it
was possible.
They load us. Becky and Celi, covered with dirt, are found
almost immediately because the car had barely missed them. But no Curtis. Two men will stay to look. Curtis can’t be seen because of day-darkness
and because he is so covered with dirt, but within two hundred feet a frightened
little boy is buried in sand to his waist, arm broken in three places, shouting
and frantically waving his good arm.
Another bout with tears as I think about how that
little boy must have felt right then, watching everybody leave without him.
Little talk occurs
as we ride up to 100mph toward the nearest hospital at Breckenridge,
Minnesota.
I sit in front between Woody and Dad, who announces, “I’m freezing to
death.”
Mother and Gerry
ride in back with baby Celi between them.
Becky lies face down on the floor.
Mother, unable to move herself, asks Gerry to move Becky off her face.
“No, I
can’t.” Gerry holds her neck and head,
unaware her neck is broken, “It hurts too bad.”
Neither knows
Becky’s head is nearly crushed in several places, worst in back, and that lying
on her back might have killed her.
Between them
little Celi moves once, takes one breath.
“Little Celi is
gone.” Mother speaks with no
emotion. There are no tears from anyone.
Six miles from the
hospital a rear tire blows out.
Passers-by have it changed in minutes.
While there a
woman announces that bad weather is coming.
“Oh, no!” Gerry
cries out, “We can’t go through it again!”
Minor damage did
occur in the Breckenridge, Minnesota/Wahpeton, North Dakota
area. Whether the same storm cell is
unknown.
At the hospital
the undertaker pronounces both granddaughters dead and asks Woody to take them
to the funeral home.
“No, I can’t. There’s a little boy back there who hasn’t
been found, and I’m going back to look for him!” In fact, Curtis had been found and already
was at the hospital.
The undertaker,
Joseph Vertin, then picks Becky up. When
he turns her over in his arms she moans, prompting him to carry her four
flights to the emergency room.
Our wounds are attended by Doctor N.R.
Kippen, a kind man who continued to attend my parents until they died in 1996
and 1997. Later I hear that wire brushes
were used to clean our sand-pitted skin, especially Curtis’ and mine, as we had
been without shirts. I remember pain,
hearing myself and Curtis screaming, but nothing more during those early
hospital hours.
My other sister,
Helen, has arrived. A young girl stays
by her side throughout that first night.
Helen later describes her as a guardian angel, and does not see her
again.
Dad is seen by
Helen first. His face appears as if a
hot iron has rubbed across it. “Helen,
we couldn’t find Curtis.”
Mother, lying on
her stomach while her deeply gashed hips are worked on, is next. “Helen, your baby is dead.”
Turning to leave,
Helen walks past Gerry, who is cut so badly Helen doesn’t recognize her. Gerry sobs helplessly that she had been
holding Celi and lost her.
Helen does not see
Becky now, but she’s been told Becky is not expected to live until
morning. So Curtis and I are next. “Mommy!” Curtis cries out, “Grandma and Jimmy
can fly just like birds! Can Grandpa and
Grandma come live with us, Mommy?
Because they don’t even have a house, everything is gone!”
“Yeah, we’ll figure
out something.” Helen does figure out a
lot of things in the next weeks and months.
She becomes our strength to go on.
(I cannot even begin to imagine the pain Helen was
feeling as she walked through the hospital learning the fate of her children,
and the rest of her family.)
“And then they
left me, Mommy. I hollered and hollered
to Grandpa but they just drove away.”
(My little nephew, Curtis, how he must have felt right
then, with Grandpa, and all of us, just leaving him, just breaks my heart.)
Helen counsels her
little boy as best she can. “Curtis,
your little sister Celi is in heaven, and God might want to take Becky too.”
Curtis thought for
a second, “I hope He doesn’t, Mommy, but if He does, we’ll just have to try to
understand and be brave.”
****
God didn’t take
Becky then, but her head had been badly injured. She was rendered unconscious for seven weeks,
to awaken helpless as a newborn and to never fully recover mentally. But thick brunette hair came to cover her
scars, and with bright eyes, though one blind, a clean and clear complexion,
pretty smile and jolly laugh, she became our beautiful little girl anyway. She loved crafts, the music of CHARLIE PRIDE,
and baking chocolate chip cookies for all her favorite men (me included!). She sometimes frustrated our attempts to
communicate, but she always gladdened our hearts with her presence, until she
died in her sleep in 1983, at age 31.
We did get a house
to live in, provided by Edwin Overboe of Kindred, North
Dakota. Helen
lived with us, nursed us, and her working husband, Clayton, joined us every
evening. The Red Cross, churches,
organizations, hundreds of families and individuals aided us and other storm
victims who lost everything, giving food, money, countless hours of labor.
What happened with
everybody’s future (my family) I will share near the end.
Returning to the
tornado experience, my family and I remember that terror, The Storm,
that period in our history where everything else happened either before The
Storm, or after. But now we have a
comparison point, something to weigh against every other bad thing that could
ever happen again. The experience
instilled in me that bad things can and do happen, that they can be that
bad, so I try not to take good things for granted. For fifty-eight years I have experienced only
rare days without remembering.
****
Two weeks after
The Storm, after my cuts and bruises were well on their way to healing (I was
hurt the least, the worst being a sprained ankle) I would see what was left of
the farm.
Nothing.
Rubble. Piles of splintered trees and boards. Unbelievably twisted machinery.
Helen and Clayton
brought me. I sat between them in a 1950
Ford Coupe. Never could I have imagined
the utter devastation. This place had
been my playground, a storybook farm. I
buried my face in Helen’s side and cried.
For months afterward many things would frighten me, even things
unrelated to the weather. I guess I must
have thought a tornado lurked around every corner. At the age of ten I knew my home was
invulnerable to any threat. Now, fifty-eight
years later, I know that no home—in fact, nothing—is invulnerable.
Twice, in the
years since, about a mile distant and during stormy weather, I have seen what
looked like huge whirlwinds (likely tornadoes that did not fully form) maybe
two or three hundred feet high. Both
times west of me, so, of course, had it been the real thing it would have came
toward me, because vicious weather comes from the west, not the east, at least
here in North Dakota. And both times
they lasted just seconds. Twice more I
have seen clouds directly overhead whirling and twirling, boiling, but no tail
came down. Twice more I have seen tails
hanging in the sky, far, far, up and away (A thousand feet high? Two thousand?
More?) and not moving, just hanging there doing nothing, basically, and
finally disappearing.
Later I learn that they are what
are known as cold weather funnels that can, possibly, grow and become
violent. Many more times I have seen
clouds rolling and tumbling over and over each other, always from the northwest
to the southeast. But never have I seen
a live tornado, except on television. I
guess I should count myself lucky. But
still, whenever storm clouds darken the sky I go outside and watch them, until
rain or straight wind forces me inside.
(I used to think that rain would mean the violence was over, but I guess
that’s not exactly true.)
And when the
weather comes at night, if there’s any sign of red or purple on the TV radar,
and close to me, I cannot sleep. I keep
watching through the window until the thunder and lightening is just distant
noise. A few years ago National Geographic
had an article about tornadoes (April 2004).
On pages 18-19 there is a map of the US
of variously-colored lines showing all known trails of tornadoes since
1950. If you look at North
Dakota, notice in the southeastern corner the two
straight yellow lines. Yellow means F4
and F5, the biggest and meanest. One I’m
sure represents the Fargo tornado
in 1957. (One of the most heart-breaking
photographs I’ve ever seen appears later in The Forum newspaper, Fargo,
ND: A rescue worker holding the body of a
small child, one of six children killed and all in the same family.)
The other yellow
line I’m pretty sure represents my tornado: the 1955 Walcott
tornado. What I’m trying to get to here
is that I’ve watched the formation and dissolution of dozens, maybe a hundred storms
in these years since 1955. And many
times I have been frightened—yes, frightened, maybe not terrified but frightened—watching,
these, freaks, of nature. So why
do I do it? Why don’t I just take
shelter and wait it out? I’ll tell you
why. Because if one of these freaks of
nature is trying to kill me again I want to see the mutherfucker coming!
****
Neighbors and
friends and other volunteers had found and buried the dead livestock, mostly
little pigs, some found hanging in trees.
No kitties survived. And the cows
and horses survived simply because they had been far to the north in the
pasture. A friend, Volney Stevens, I
heard, found and buried Pal, and marked her grave with the leg from a blue
wooden chair. I looked and looked but I
never found her grave.
We—Dad, Mother,
Gerry, and I—would return in October. We
would rebuild in the same spot, with all the buildings just where they had
been. Actually the only new building
would be the barn. The hog house and
granary (looking very much like the ones destroyed) would be found on other
farms and moved in. Our house would come
from a kind man from Sheldon, North
Dakota. (I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know your
name.) Cleanup would go on for
years, but we did recreate a storybook farm.
I say ‘storybook’ because that farm had everything.
The approximately
10-acre farmstead was located directly on the boundary of east and west. East of the house was the new calf pasture,
about three acres of green grass and boxelder trees growing from the roots
still left in the ground from the mature grove that had been there. East beyond the calf pasture was flat
agricultural field land.
Approximately 100
feet west of the house began the pastures and hay meadows. Native grass, wildflowers, wild animals, and
hills.
****
The new barn
became a magical place for me. A bull
pen was located in the northwest corner, with a new bull every year. We always had three purebred Holstein
bulls, a days-old calf, a yearling, and a two-year-old taking care of the
cows. We were slowly developing a
purebred dairy herd. The bulls were
named after the farmer where we got them.
Several were named Frank, one Dell, and one Terry. Dairy breed bulls are known for being mean,
but they all respected the whip. They
didn’t seem to understand that the little whip we carried would mean nothing if
they were to charge. Three calf pens
held calves of different ages. An
enclosed room held ground oats and corn for feed. Another room held a small machine that
separated raw milk into skim milk—which we fed to the young calves, cats and
dogs, and piglets—and cream, which we sold in town and to other farm families.
The south side of
the barn held about a dozen stalls, one for each of the milk cows: Red,
Knothead, Domino, Snowflake, Cutie-face, Keyhole, Brutus, Sparkle, Mabel, Chief
Kickapoo, and Tiny, a dear little Guernsey with
horns. Nearly every animal had a
name. The cats were Major (a
bobcat/domestic cross), Currents, Halloween, Patches, Puff, Frisky, Tommy, and
Sylvester. Even some of the pigs had
names (but naming forty piglets became a chore).
I had four bottle
lambs one year. They were provided by
Alder Helling, a dear neighbor. They
became bottle lambs either because they were too weak to nurse properly or
their mother rejected them. I gave them
Indian names from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
No creatures on
earth ever gave me so much trouble.
Imagine having just two hands but four lambs all wanting to get fed at
the same time. Normally I didn’t have
help. I don’t remember how I handled it. Because, basically, only one could get fed at
one time, because the nipple would not stay on the bottle unless you held it
on, and of course the lamb is bunting the bottle (and me), because instinct is
telling him/her that bunting will increase the milk flow. And had I and the bottle been its natural
mother with an udder then his/her instinct would have been correct. There were several cuss words and much
spilled milk. But I loved them.
And they wouldn’t
stay in their pen (which was built for the much bigger calves). The instigator was always the black-faced one
I called Nokomis. Nokomis was the leader
of the lambs and also a leader in the poem of Hiawatha. But I strongly believe that if Nokomis hadn’t
been there one of the others would have led.
And of course
there were more dogs: Sport, Tornado, Queenie, King, but no dog to this day has
ever taken the place of Pal.
And I kept wild
creatures: a horned lark, a great horned owl, a raccoon, a cottontail,
white-footed mice, galvanized tubs for aquariums and terrariums. And nature visited our farm: crows, magpies,
ducks and geese, great blue herons, minks and weasels, deer, fox, rabbits and
squirrels. And right there on the farm I
had 160 acres of trees, pastures, shelterbelts, wetlands, to explore. If I wanted to walk west I could go for miles
and miles (and often did) and never see another human being or habitation.
I was happy. I was satisfied. I loved my life. But I guess I wasn’t really learning much
about life. Because then teenage
confusion set in.
****
I spent my first
eight school years in a one-room country schoolhouse just a half mile from
home. (Only twelve kids in all eight
grades.) (The schoolhouse blew away
too. A witness said it was way up in the
sky and then just exploded. That fall
another one-room schoolhouse was moved in.)
I walked every day. I explored
the ditches on both sides of the road. I
found shiny pebbles and collected them.
I found caterpillars of all colors and collected them, and put them in
bottles with weeds, and watched them continue eating, then spin a cocoon, and
in the spring come out as a butterfly or moth.
Then I graduated
from eighth grade. The next year meant
the town school. It meant riding a bus
to school instead of walking. And
meeting new kids. I don’t really know
what happened. I went from twelve kids
in eight grades to 100 kids in twelve grades.
It was different. It was a social
shock. I didn’t adjust.
I did fairly well
my freshman year. I loved school and learning,
especially my biology class, and Mr. Lensingrave who took us on a field trip,
only about one or two blocks down the gravel road and ditch, but Mr.
Lensingrave knew the names of plants and other stuff! And Mrs. Lahren’s English class. I already loved to read, but she introduced
me to the wonders of reading fiction. My
favorite novel became Swiftwater, by Paul Annixter. For many years I would read that novel again
and again. Thank you, Mrs. Lahren.
Then came the
sophomore year. I started learning that
some students didn’t share my appreciation of school and learning. Some disrupted class, and gave the teachers a
bad time, and did mean things to other kids.
Once at physical-ed one of my best friends got his clothes torn off,
right in front of everybody, boys and girls both. I was abhorred, and shocked, and can still
see him walking naked. Another time a
girl (not at school) got her clothes torn not off, just lifted so everybody
could see under her dress. She fought
but had no chance. I was there but I
couldn’t (at least ‘didn’t’) protect her. I couldn’t/didn’t help or protect
either. I still feel guilty about
that. Some of you reading this might
wonder, was that why I quit school, because I was afraid bad things would
happen to me? I don’t know but I don’t
think so. I don’t remember ever being
afraid, exactly, and also no bad things ever did happen to me.
Then I asked a
girl to a rare school dance. She said “No,”
that her dad wouldn’t let her go. That’s
what she said, but what I guess I must have heard, “No, I just don’t want to
go with you.” I’m not saying that
straw broke the camel’s back either, but at the end of the sophomore year I
announced I was quitting school. Others
said they would too. But I was the only
one who did. One of those who didn’t
quit that year quit the next, after his junior year.
Mr. Deinhart, my
history teacher (who just had to announce it to the whole class one day when I
got a hundred percent on a test) came out to the farm to see me, and tried to
convince me not to quit. Thanks for
that, Mr. Deinhart. I won’t forget you.
After quitting
school I took my very first job. Picking
and grading potatoes for $1.00/hour. Wow,
my first money. I soon bought a 1948
Chevy for $75.00. (And no, I don’t still
have it.) I was only fifteen and I was
the only boy in my ex-class to have a car.
Big deal. (A 1954 Ford would soon
follow, and, no, I don’t still have that either, and that was one cherry car!)
My next job was
doing chores for our nearest neighbor while he received surgery for a
hernia. For $25.00/week I worked from
seven in the morning to about six at night, with a few hours off during mid-day.
The neighbor’s name was Randolph and his wife Rachel. They were one of the three neighbor families
who I considered extra parents.
I had several more
jobs, all for neighbors and local farmers.
Then I turned seventeen and that teenage confusion did not let up. In May of 1962 I gave up that heaven-on-earth
storybook farm and went to see the local recruiter in Wahpeton, North
Dakota. Soon I
would be earning $85.00/month. Wow. But if I thought going to the ‘town’
school was a social shock, I was in for a much ruder awakening.
Six months after that ‘awakening’
I would check-in aboard a navy submarine, the USS Carbonero SS337, for the next
three and one half years…but that is another story….
****
Every person I have mentioned in
this story is now gone to what I hope is their reward, except Gerry, my sister,
and Curtis, my nephew.
Gerry moved on from highschool to
NDSSS and soon had a good job with the county, then she married Don and blessed
us with five children. Curtis moved to western Montana,
married, and has two children who have blessed him with two grandchildren.
Helen and Clayton blessed us with three more daughters. Clayton was killed in
an auto accident in 1976. Helen met Duane and married again, and passed away in
2011 at age 80. Doctor Kippen is long retired.
****
Myself? Well, my story is continued
in my memoirs book mentioned earlier. After endless jobs and much not-exactly-meaningful-travel,
I have moved onto a few acres exactly two and one half miles west of the
original farm site, and very likely very close to where the 1955 tornado first
touched down. I didn’t pick here to be close to that site, I just liked the
piece of land, so I bought it and started building.
Even so, sometimes I get a bit of a
spooky feeling about where I now live.
So here is a description of the
next most vicious storm (after 1955) I have ever witnessed. It happened last
August, 2012. Even 12 years after beginning this project I still had not been
able to afford siding for my house. (Twice people have offered me siding, but,
hey, that would have meant opening a can of worms I wasn’t prepared to tackle.
On an outbuilding, yes, I would have taken it, but my house—Come on!)
Anyway, my house was covered with
what they call “Housewrap,” some form of ultraviolet-resistant plastic that
comes in a roll ten feet wide, and held up with dozens and dozens of nailed
lath. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but, hey, things take time! Oh, and good luck
installing that alone in even a gentle breeze, but I did.
Returning to that most recent
event, the past days had been stormy. Off and on I’d check the weather channel
and/or the Internet. I could see lots of red weather coming on the radar,
and some was supposed to be severe, so, yeah, I kept checking and
checking to be sure of where the radar was showing red, or worse, purple, and
what direction it was going. Then I would check outside. I feel I’m pretty good
at doing my own weather forecasting.
Outside I could see nothing I
considered threatening (and forgot [or ignored] the fact that sometimes weather
can form right over one’s head) so, I decided to make a meal and relax with
supper. About halfway through, the storm “from nowhere” hit.
And hit hard and fast!
I went from window to window trying
to see something—anything! But it was raining so hard, and the wind was
blowing so hard, that all I could see was white, like a winter blizzard. And
now get this: There was a roar, a constant roar. No, it was not thunder. I know
the difference! Was I reliving 1955? Yes, I was, and nowhere to go, nowhere to
hide. Just like 1955. And a somewhat humorous thing while this was going on: I
kept returning to my plate to grab another mouthful—couldn’t get kicked around
by another tornado on an empty stomach! Right?
The rain and wind and roar went on
for a long time. I was scared. I will admit it.
Then it happened. My house is
one-story on the south end and two-story on the north. Where they join the
“Housewrap” let go and the rain began coming in through the splice, just
pouring, and there was nothing I could do.
Finally the “microburst”—as I heard
my weatherman once describe it—moved on.
In the end, I couldn’t have a house
that leaked, so I emptied my checking account, maxed out my two credit cards,
and sold my car to pay for vinyl siding, which, luckily, I was able to install
myself. So now my house will keep the rain out.
However, I still don’t have a place
to take shelter.
The plan is to build a tiny
enclosed room out of concrete blocks inside the house, but that has not yet
happened.
I’ve always felt that once was
enough, that a tornado would never get to me again.
I could be wrong.
--0—
Biography
James W. Nelson was born in a little
farmhouse on the prairie in eastern North Dakota
in 1944. Some doctors made house calls back in those days. He remembers
kerosene lamps, bathing in a large galvanized tub, and their phone number was a
long ring followed by four short ones, and everybody in the neighborhood could
rubberneck. (Imagine that today!)
James has been telling stories most
of his life. Some of his first memories happened during recess in a one-room
country schoolhouse near Walcott, ND.
His little friends, eyes wide, would gather round and listen to his every
hastily-imagined word. It was a
beginning. Fascinated by the world
beginning to open, he remembers listening to the teacher read to all twelve kids
in the eight grades.
He was living in that same house on
the land originally homesteaded by his great grandfather, when a savage tornado
hit in 1955 and destroyed everything. They rebuilt and his family remained
until the early nineteen-seventies when diversified farming began changing to
industrial agribusiness (not necessarily a good thing.) He spent four
years in the US Navy during the Vietnam War (USS Carbonero and USS Archerfish.)
After the navy he worked many jobs
and finally has settled on a few acres exactly two and one half miles straight
west of the original farmstead, ironically
likely the very spot where the 1955 tornado first struck, which sometimes gives
him a spooky feeling.
Books
by James W. Nelson
(Digital
downloads $0.99-$3.99; paperbacks $10,00-$29.95)
From the author: In my fiction I do
not try to create super-heroes, but rather bring alive common and regular
people who try to find love, survive, and react to circumstances as best they
can, and, usually, try to do the right thing. The books are more than one
genre, from war to sex and violence to romance to humor to horror to
fantasy to science fiction to adventure, I write in
third-person with viewpoints by men, women, and children.
Novels
Winter in July (65,500
words) (nuclear war drama) (the doomsday clock is ticking…it will
reach midnight) Kirby
Yates helps his town prepare for the ultimate war, which nobody believes will
ever happen.
Callipygia (66,100 words)
(romantic drama) (the Utopian world of Callipygia…just a legend?) (love, sex,
violence) Callipygia is a place, or maybe just a state of mind, for if you
go there, and partake, you will become changed…forever. Stephanie
Daniels, newspaper journalist, goes on the undercover assignment of her life,
and finally finds true love.
Experiments (82,500 words)
(medical mystery drama) (pharmacological research gone berserk) Shea
McTory, homeless, volunteers to be locked up six months for a human nutrition
study, learns to deal with nine other volunteers—one a psychopath—and meets the
love of his life.
Daughters (40,200 words)
(abduction, crime, prostitution, love of a father (The heartbreak of human
trafficking) Emotion and love in the house where Emma grew up was rare.
Boat Sailors (29,700 words) (Vietnam
War action by fleet submarines) Fresh from the farm, Brice Moser,
Torpedoman’s Mate, Seaman, will soon discover his rating covers much more than
torpedoes.
The Bellwether (229,000
words)(economic & environmental meltdown) (the mother of all disasters)
(love, sex, violence, drama, adventure) Aaron Hodges has one month to take his
colonists 300 miles to northern Minnesota wilderness…not by truck but horse and
wagon, but first he has to convince them to want to go.
The Light at the End of the
Tunnel (68,600 words) (one theory of reincarnation) (horror, crime, drama,
foster care) (if the state kills a worst-of-the-worst criminal, does he
really die?)The prison chaplain recruits nurse Nicole Waters to help
him find and stop the reborn worst-of-the-worst criminal, Les Paul, now
rampaging through foster home after foster home.
Short
Story Collections
Strange & Weird Stories
(43,500 words) (the unknown: as close as beside you)
A Collection of Short
Contemporary Stories (48,200) (Stories about people just like you.)
Short
Stories
Waiting to Die (3300 words)
Since the 1918-1919 influenza outbreak, mankind has feared return of the
pandemic, an extraordinarily-mutated virus, that vicious creature that cannot
be seen by the naked eye.) (Young people are dying, so many that hospitals can
no longer provide for them. Staunch Derek Whitfield, 25-year Army vet, has
volunteered for end-of-life hospice care. He sees nothing but darkness waiting
on The Other Side, until he meets Susannah Brite, his forty-second client.)
The Commons (8000 words)
) Wilderness in a man’s backyard. Through complaints of animal sounds, smells,
and loud music journalist Kari Aldrich is led to the story. She finds the land as it was before white man
appeared…and it’s coming back.
To the Nineteenth Century (6300
words) Demolition workers Selby and Rivet see the 19th and 20th centuries at
the same time (and a dangerous time warp) from the steps of their next
project. Demolition must stop.
He had it Coming (5900
words) (A boss gets murdered, and nobody, not his family, and not even one
employee, is sorry.)
Nature
Short Stories
One Morning at Boxelder Cove (2700
words) Not big, Boxelder Cove covers about one hundred feet by one hundred
feet, plus the house where the humans live. Wildlife use its sunny canopy and
leafy shade. Vociferous Tamius, the Red Squirrel, knows this sheltered enclave
as home.
One Morning at Juneberry Row (3000 words) Juneberry
Row is a really small place. About eighty-five feet long and maybe twenty-five
feet at the widest part. It’s a tangle of twelve to fifteen-feet-tall
Juneberry, Chokecherry, and Buckthorn trees, Poison Ivy, Stinging Nettle,
Cocklebur, and wild Grape vines; in fact it’s a bramble patch, fitting for Brer
Rabbit himself. In this case, though, it’s the home of Sybil, the Cottontail
rabbit.
Nonfiction
Dying to Live (58,400 words)
(autobiography) (the life & times of Jimmy Nelson)
Tornado! (6200 words) (As
the anniversary date [58 years] approaches, an update.)
Thanks for reading
Author’s notes
(Digital
downloads $0.99-$4.99; paperbacks $10.00-$29.95)
In my fiction I do
not try to create super-heroes, but rather bring alive common and regular
people who try to find love, survive, and react to circumstances as best they
can, and, usually, try to do the right thing. The books are more than one
genre, from war to sex and violence to romance to humor to horror to
fantasy to science fiction to adventure, I write in
third-person with viewpoints by men, women, and children.
Contact
nelsonjamesw@hotmail.com email
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S Author page at Amazon
http://morninginapril.weebly.com Website & Blog
https://www.facebook.com/#!/ Facebook
http://subron7.hubpages.com/ HubPages
Feel free to contact me. (Response is not guaranteed)
(The world is full of psychos and wackos)
A reminder for when you go to Amazon to read digital
books, mine and many other authors: Amazon has a free APP download that allows
you to read your book on any electronic device, including PC, Mac, iPad,
iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.
Occasionally I list one of my books as free for a day, sometimes more than a day. Look for
those announcements on my blog, HubPages, Twitter, and Facebook
One last thing: When you visit my website, please check
out the Freebies page.
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