Because I am an older American and lived in Indiana, I was alive when tornadoes ripped through on Palm Sunday, 1965. I would have been a junior in high school and possibly fretting about homework that would be due on Monday. It might have been Easter Vacation, though, I really don’t remember.
What I do remember is my Mother coming into the West Room (aka – the Cold Room) and telling us a black cloud was coming very fast over the treeline. She and my grandmother went to the basement; I don’t know why my father and I didn’t feel the urgency to do so. And it seemed, at first, as if we had been right.
Then, a little while later someone came to the door and asked if we had phone service and added that the farm house across the field and beyond the trees had been lifted up and turned on its foundation. Down the road, houses were picked up and thrown into the lake.
Just a little northwest of the house, on the road we took to the orchard, a man I knew sat on his lawn with his house in shambles, a huge, huge tree totally uprooted not far from him and metal from silo wrapped around trees in a nearby woods.
Forty-seven tornadoes killed 271 people. One lifted after it hit that aforementioned farm house and went right over our heads and set back down – and we didn’t even know it. Amazing. And tragic for others.
When we lived in the panhandle of Oklahoma one day we had a strong line of storms go over us. A common event I didn’t pay much attention to it. I was upstairs sewing and my machine made quite a bit of noise plus I had music playing. The kids all went down in the basement to watch a movie. It got quite dark and I remember turning on a light thinking it was really dark outside but still sat there sewing. About five minutes later my neighbor was calling asking if we were okay. Of course I replied, why? She said a tornado had gone right over our house. I was oblivious to it but the kids all swear they heard roaring. I doubted them until we went outside (after the hail that had started quit) and discovered the tornado had taken out trees behind our house, bounced over us and took out a wheat field in front of our house. Kind of scared me that I didn’t realize what was happening.
On a different occasion it was a different story and we stood on the porch watching the tornado moving across the plains about a mile away. I learned that if the tornado looks like it’s not moving you need to hide, it means it’s moving right at you. When it is moving diagonally from you it is easy to see. I like it when they move away.