Tornadoes-a-Go-Go and Other Stormy Fables

Tornadoes have been a regular fixture in my life, although the closest I ever came to experiencing one might have been only a few months ago, when the sirens went off here in Arlington and our trusty weatherman Troy Dungan predicted that the storm was moving southeast, making a beeline from White Settlement to South Arlington. But since childhood, there've been more than several instances where a tornado – whether in the form of a watch or warning, a dream, or a story's theme – has figured slightly less than prominently. So just for shits and grins, and to capture it on paper, I'll just go back in time, trying to pinpoint where it all started, this fascination with such a weirdly wonderful and woefully deadly weather phenomenon.

Maybe it's because I grew up with the most fabulous weatherman in the world, Harold Taft on Fort Worth's Channel 5. He's one of the earliest TV personalities I remember, always looking dapper in polyester suits we'd no doubt find ultra-hideous in these modern times, but back in those days, he was larger than life, right up there with Mr. Peppermint. He really won my heart when he used my drawing – my fucking drawing – on the five o'clock news. Mr. Taft always featured the latest kindergarten masterpieces from the local kiddies; practically every other East Fort Worth kid I knew probably had one of their pictures featured on the Channel 5 news at some time or another, too. Harold was beyond cool.

But Harold also talked about the spooky things called tornadoes, pointing with his stick to the big board, showing our area with the various cut-out graphics and whatnot, long before the days of Power Point and those fancy screens with the weather radar. He'd point to fluffy paper clouds that, for reasons unknown, always made me crave those powdery mashed potatoes they served at school. When it rained, the cloud would be made of gray paper with a few droplets here and there. And one day I noticed something new - these strange, longish, triangular cutouts, made of the same paper stick but with spirals drawn on them. I asked my mother what a tornado was, and no doubt she did her best to explain it to me.

My earliest memory of a possible tornado came when my brother Paul picked me up early from Meadowbrook one day, in his light blue Chevy Malibu with white vinyl seats, the ones my ass would stick to in the summertime. It was soon after the school year had started – I was in Mrs. Puckett's kindergarten class, so about 11 in the morning, right before lunchtime, and there must have been a real threat of one because there was my brother, picking me up. When we got home, he'd said, "Let's go look for tornadoes!" and his enthusiasm was contagious. I followed him right outside, where we scanned the dark skies for funnel clouds. "You'll see them spin," he'd instructed me, pointing up at the charcoal-colored clouds.

We were in the very, very back of our humongous back yard – the place I was usually too chickenshit to venture by myself because of another weird dream I’d had back then, involving little candy skeletons being buried in Karmel Korn boxes out there. Don't ask. But since my brother had taken me back there, I no doubt felt confident that he'd happily kick some candy skeleton ass if need be, to protect his little sister. For a few minutes, we looked up into the sky and into the northwest horizon, out over Brentwood Stair and over I-30, and across the way, to this Acropolis-looking bank building on a big hill. Luckily, we spied nothing spooky in the sky, so we went back inside.

The tornado drills that followed through my years at Meadowbrook Elementary only enhanced my already-heightened storm anxiety, when the bells would ring angrily and like ducklings, we'd file out into the halls and crouch into position at the base of the lockers. It was even scarier at Mitchell Boulevard, when we were all bused from the East Side out to the Dunbar area, and it never failed to cross my mind that my mother, father or brother might not get there in time if a tornado were to come blow us away. Do they even do tornado drills anymore? I think Fort Worth gave up on busing eventually.

It was during those creepy Mitchell Boulevard days that Harold Taft started touting a new book he'd written, called simply, "Texas Weather." It cost $5, which included postage and handling, and naturally, I bugged the shit out of my parents until they mailed in a check and that bulky envelope arrived from Channel 5. Looking back on it, I do wonder what kind of sicko child I must've been, staring in fascination for hours at the pictures of evilly wispy or double-wide nightmare tornadoes and their subsequent destruction in places like Xenia, Ohio, and Enid, Oklahoma. I remember another picture of some giggling kids, holding up sticks from which dead water moccasins hung, having washed in after a flood. I didn't care much for the pictures of the clouds, unless there was an obvious storm brewing. That book eventually fell apart after a few months, and to my delight, the East Branch library had several other cool weather books, a bit more in depth than that little "Texas Weather" paperback.

The older I got, though, the stark reality of a tornado's destruction – seen in countless TV and newspaper stories – didn't seem as interesting as they were frightening. I remember the front page of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the morning after the double-barrel Wichita Falls tornado struck. When was that – '77? I only remember a full-page picture and a headline. That's all I needed to see. It was the morning after one of those famous St. John's pancake or chili suppers.

Living in Tornado Alley, though, all this is pretty much just second nature. There's something almost primal about what this particular force of nature can bring. You feel it everywhere, in your hair follicles, in your loins, and down to your toes, as your body responds to the atmospheric changes. I always find myself feeling somewhat sexual before a storm erupts. Maybe it's the ions, perhaps it's the feeling that you'll want someone close by if any major climactic Armageddon shit does decide to go down. What would you do if you found out you had only half an hour to live? Why does gooey, relentless penetration always come to my mind first?

Of course, with sex comes birth and death; these are two things that have always stayed true for me. In the spring of 1991, right as my sister was going into labor in Fort Worth, some turbulent, unstable shit was percolating across the Midwest, through Oklahoma and Kansas. And since my sister's mother-in-law Mary and her brother Joe had to drive down from Kansas City, through all that same, lovely weather, we couldn’t rest until they'd made it safely in from their trek down Interstate 35. This was the same storm system CNN had shown a clip of, one of the most horrifying things I'd ever seen in my life. This monster-ass tornado was coming after this poor family and a news crew, as they'd been driving down a highway in Kansas, golf ball-sized hail pelting their car and making a hellacious racket. Both cars parked under the next overpass, and the families ran to the top corner to huddle. Keep in mind, the news crew's camera is rolling this entire time. I'll never forget how just before the tornado went over them, the only sound you could hear was exactly what people have described in the past – that freight train barreling toward you, minus mercy. But as the tornado passed over them, the freight train sound stopped. Pffft. A shockingly static silence followed, and seconds later, the freight train sound carried off into the distance and the next sound you heard was the family and news crew, too shocked to say much of anything besides "oh my God!" and some utterances interspersed with sobbing. I prayed for them. I prayed that someone in either of those two cars had a stash of Valium or Librium handy, because you know these people must have either been shaking uncontrollably, their legs like jelly. Or maybe they were too shocked to do much of anything. Who knows? They'd nearly fucking died, for chrissakes.

Later that morning, my beautiful nephew Andrew was born. April 26, 1991. Taurus the Bull. He has all the best qualities of one born under this Venus-ruled sign, but he also has those trademark horse's ass moments that drive my sister batty. Ever since he was born that spring morning, I've always thought of him as a tornado, blazing his own trail through life and realizing early on that the only rules he should live by are his own. Thankfully, though, unlike a tornado, though, he's very respectful of others.

Ironically, my father's high school mascot was a tornado. The Ball High Tornadoes, from Galveston, Texas. Their colors were purple and gold, which I've always found pleasing. It always reminded me of a bruise, as they fade from their original blueberry-blue tint, the color of a night sky.

The only tornado I've seen up close was actually 12 miles away. I was an intern at the now-defunct Met, when they had their office on top of that SMU frat-boy dive, the Green Elephant. From our vantage point, we could see a funnel cloud touch down in Duncanville, south of the Dallas skyline. It was quite a sight, a wisp of a funnel from a distance, but packing a punch at ground zero, according to later news reports of damages and slight injuries. Thankfully, no one was killed, and I do remember a flirtatious moment between two office workers as we all stared out the window. So I don’t think that's just me.

Horror of horrors, and contrary to all the times I'd probably said back in junior high that I wish a tornado would strike before I had to go to school, a massive tornado hit my hometown of Fort Worth in March of 2000, killing several and causing massive damage that made me gasp when I saw it for the first time. I was working at in North Dallas at the time, driving down Harry Hines in the pouring rain because I was too scared to take the highway, my ear peeled to the coverage on the AM news stations, who were all on the scene and giving color commentary I'm sure they’d hoped they'd never have to give in their careers. I couldn’t relax until I'd gotten in touch with my Dad, who was unscathed. Ever so thankful, I popped a Klonopin and went down to Ronn's apartment, where we watched local TV coverage until midnight, both of us just gob-smacked.

When the sun came up the next morning, Fort Worth's Bank One Building looked like it'd been nuked. Crews couldn’t get into downtown Fort Worth for days because of all the glass falling from the other mangled buildings. The Cash America building, west of downtown, was toast. Fort Worth has sprung back - come out swinging, so to speak, and continues to prosper. But there are some scars. There's also a warehouse building next to the post office here in south Arlington that still has a corner knocked off. I don't know why they haven't bothered to repair it – it's been four years already – but it's also a startling reminder that Mother Nature is not to be mocked or fucked with.

After the Fort Worth Tornado, one dream in particular really freaked my cookies. We were back at the house on Warrington, and my mother was still alive, but ill – she lay in bed as my father, their friends Mary and Jim Dorman and I scurried around, gathering flashlights, candles and matches, ready to move Mom down the hall, where she’d hide out with us. I remember in the dream, I kept feeling around in my pocket, making sure my money and stash were close at hand Despite my dad's warnings not to go near the big window in the den, I couldn't keep myself away, and could see the funnel cloud way up in the sky, over that big pine tree, and I called to everyone to let them know it was only passing over us on its way southeast. Then I woke up.

I've never bothered trying to figure that one out, but one aspect of it crept up into the first real tornado scare of this year, back in March. Along with Troy Dungan on the small battery-powered TV, we tracked the hail and funnel clouds as they moved from White Settlement down through north Fort Worth, through Richland Hills, southeast along 820 near Lake Arlington, and then a little more eastward toward South Arlington. Where we live.

And as the wind howled with a ferocity that I could actually feel in my own bones, and the marble-sized hail pinged at our front window, once I located my purse, wallet, keys, cell phone and stash, the instinct to gather up the most important and valuable things clicked into full gear. The old man hollered at me to get my ass in the hall with the flashlights and lanterns. I laughed at him. Did he honestly think I could sit still at that moment? We listened as the sirens went off, and once again, the old man asked if I was out of my fucking mind as I made several defiant sorties here and there, grabbing my favorite boxes of photographs, data disks with my writing, and other assorted bits and pieces I knew I'd need at some later point. Finally, he could stand it no longer, and ordered me into the hallway with the dog, who by this point was staging her own frightened freak show – with her head buried in the crook of my arm, crying and terrified. Bless her sweet little heart. She hates storms. This was the worst one I'd had to talk her through, and it reminded me of all the times I'd have to keep a certain high school party buddy on an even keel during our acid trips together. Anyway, once I was satisfied that everything I'd take with me in a pinch was within arm's reach, I crouched down in the hall, the reality of how close me might actually be to having to spend the night in a shelter closing in on me.

But thanks to the ever-lovin', pink-cheeked, blue-eyed Lord, we made it through that storm without losing power, our valuables, and most importantly, no lives were lost. The old man and I were lucky, compared to a lot of people, some of whom remained without electricity for an entire week. And it taught us that living in Tornado Alley, we should always be prepared for the next one, because there will be others. There’s nothing like the unpredictable beauty of a Texas storm, though. At times, they’re even kind of sexy. And I suppose every place has its atmospheric ups and downs. The Northeast and Chicago – blankets of snow. California – earthquakes, mudslides, and fires. The Virgin Islands, Key West and Puerto Rico - hurricanes. Hawaii – volcanoes. And somehow I doubt there's a meteorological equivalent to "the grass is greener on the other side" anywhere out there.