Sunday, March 14

We chided ourselves when we awoke this morning and saw that it was 8:30 a.m., and we were not yet up. Then we realized that our brains thought it was 7:30, because of Daylight Savings Time.

I skipped my exercises this morning and just proceeded to get ready for the day. Spent the morning as I usually do on Sundays...washing clothes, programming the DVR, reading the newspaper.

Lunch today was beans and ham, oven fried potatoes, and chard prepared with olive oil and onions. There was also cornbread for Hubbie. It was a good old-fashioned, yummy, southern meal.

After lunch, around 2 p.m., we went to the museum to hear some folks tell stories of tornadoes they'd survived. One of the survivors will celebrate her 100th birthday in June. She rode out a 1929 tornado in a small community near our town.

A retired school superintendent told about a 1973 tornado that destroyed much of a local school, but miraculously injured only two children. The same tornado also struck the college where I attend water aerobics.

A hospital staff member from a town about 45 minutes from us, showed a slide show of the aftermath of a tornado that struck the hospital and other buildings and businesses in her town in 2008.

Members of the audience also related stories of storms they'd lived through. We didn't tell our experiences, but both Hubbie and I have survived tornadoes. In a town about an hour and a half from here, a 1970s twister took the roof off the home Hubbie lived in while the family was asleep, lifting one family member from her bed and tossing her into another room. The tornado caused millions of dollars in damage to the town.

The tornado I lived through happened in April of 1965, when my youngest son was only weeks old. On that day, I gathered my kids for a visit to Mother's house. The skies looked stormy, but I had never experienced a tornado, so I was unafraid.

Mother's house was a couple of miles from mine, and on that muggy day around 6 p.m., we saw the sky turn a sickening yellow at the horizon with purple-black clouds above. The atmosphere was eerie, still, just before the storm hit. We watched from a window as in the distance, in town, an enormous funnel dropped from the clouds and began moving from the southwest to the northeast. It found a large propane tank, which exploded, shooting debris everywhere, even as far as Mother's house.

That was all we needed to see. I grabbed my kids, and we huddled under the kitchen table, not knowing what else to do to stay safe. In hindsight, I don't think that flimsy table would have protected us much in a direct hit. The tornado was far enough away, though, that we didn't even hear the roar that others describe. After a few minutes, it began to rain hard and the sky lightened.

Later, we saw the destruction...the tornado, several blocks wide, wiped out a large part of the town. Six were dead, including my neighbor, who was swept away when the storm ripped the kitchen from her house. My own house (a rental) imploded. Two-by-four planks of wood were driven through the roof and into the rooms. In the town, 200 people were injured, and property damage was in the millions. At the airport, small planes were tossed like toys into the trees. Houses were leveled, oddly leaving a closet here or a bathtub there.

We have now entered tornado season, and those of us who have lived through them will closely monitor storms on TV and radio. I yearn for a tornado shelter (or "hidey-hole," as they're called around here), but we will just have to make do with sheltering in the pantry, if necessary.

We were back home around 3 p.m. Mother went home, Hubbie continued watching tournament basketball games on TV, and I played on my laptop.

Later, we watched a movie..."King of California," a 2007, PG-13 film starring Michael Douglas. A mentally ill man, who left his teenage daughter to raise herself, returns home from an institution determined to find Spanish treasure buried beneath a warehouse store. Cute movie.

The second feature we saw was, "Elevator Girl," from the Hallmark Channel. A successful young lawyer and a peppy girl get stuck on an elevator. They hit it off. But he has just been made a partner in the firm, while she is a waitress who wants to become a chef. They date anyway, but their romance gets tricky when they start socializing first with his elite friends, then with her backyard-barbecue friends.