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Rambiling & Ruminating The recent outbreak of destructive tornadoes across the southeast has caused me to dredge up some old memories of some of my experiences with tornadoes. I have never experienced a direct hit from a tornado, but I have had some close calls and seen up close and personal, some of their results. Even after witnessing the aftermath of a major storm it's hard to imagine that anything could be that destructive. A small tornado hit near my grandparent's house on West Cedar St. in Jackson knocking down a small outbuilding and plucking the feathers from a few chickens. I was too young to remember it, but I recall my parents talking about how scared everyone was. When I was 5 years old my parents moved to Texas and settled in the small town of Gorman, 125 miles west of Ft. Worth. This place just happened to be right in the middle of what was known locally as "Tornado Alley". We would soon learn how it earned the name. Almost every farmhouse in west Texas had a storm shelter. Actually, most of them were just root cellars that doubled as storm shelters, but you know what they say about any port in a storm. Storm cellars were not as numerous in town, but there was one located behind a house near where we lived. It was nothing more than a rectangular pit about 8 by 10 feet and 5 feet deep. The roof was covered with a layer of logs and dirt with grass growing on it. The entrance was covered with a wooden door that was almost parallel with the ground. Inside there were a couple of wooden benches along the sides and a kerosene lamp hung from the ceiling. These cellars also usually had an abundance of home canned vegetables stored on shelves along the walls and maybe a pile of potatoes on the floor. I vividly remember several times being awakened by my parents in the middle of the night with a storm raging. They would pick me and my brother Johnny up out of bed and carry us out of the house through the wind, rain and lightning and head to the nearest cellar where we would arrive soaking wet and scared to death. Sometimes there would be three or four families jammed in the cellar, but nobody was complaining. After the storm passed everyone went back home and changed into dry clothes, but it was sometimes hard to get back to sleep. I remember one time we went through this ordeal twice in one night. Tornadoes are famous for leaving strange and unexplainable sights in their wake. I remember once going to see a farmhouse that had just been destroyed by a tornado. The house had been hit around dinnertime and was completely gone. Nothing was left but the bare foundation, but in the place where the kitchen had been there was a table and four chairs, apparently undisturbed, and with food still on the table. Luckily, the family had made it to the cellar in time to escape injury. Another time, my father had left the house, but returned shortly with the news that a tornado had just hit the little town of Desdemona about eight miles to the east of us. We all piled into the car to go see the damage. When we arrived it was apparent that most of the town, consisting of just a few buildings was gone. One man who had been in his car when he saw the storm coming realized that he could not outrun it, so he pulled over and ran across the road and got into a ditch and layed down. When the storm passed over it destroyed his car, tearing the engine out and dropping it in the ditch across the road within 3 feet of where the man lay. How lucky can you get? The worst tornado damage I ever saw resulted from the one that hit Wichita Falls, Texas in 1979. That storm cut a path one and one-half miles wide and 10 miles long. It destroyed over 5,000 homes, killed 42 and injured 1,700. It reminded me of the pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombs hit. As bad as tornadoes are, I can remember one that had an unexpectedly good outcome. One summer back in the 50s we were visiting in Jackson as we did every year. My uncle, Jim Atchison, had taken his son Jimmy and me up to our fish camp at the mouth of Jackson Creek on the Tombigbee for a week of fishing. My uncle went in his jeep while me and Jimmy came up the river. Our boat had a 7-1/2 HP Champion outboard engine which ran pretty good when you could get it started, but it was very aggravating. Well, as luck would have it, a brief, but violent storm blew up the next day that nearly knocked the camp down. After it was over we discovered a few trees down and the boat was sunk. We concluded that it must have been a small tornado. The engine was ruined, so my uncle went to the Western Auto store in Jackson and brought back a brand new 10 HP Wizard outboard. Now we had a motor that would actually start and turned our boat into a racer. Jimmy and me were happy campers for the rest of that trip.
My experiences with tornadoes have left me physically unscathed, but my memories of what I have seen them do are a constant reminder of what they are capable. The people of Enterprise and the other places that have suffered have my deepest sympathy.
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