tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2431498412944656953.post681195862021790974..comments2023-09-18T07:43:38.313-04:00Comments on OD Refugee: The Scariest Night Of My LifeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2431498412944656953.post-33175943520589733462011-04-14T06:22:48.459-04:002011-04-14T06:22:48.459-04:00Where I grew up, we didn't have tornadoes. (At...Where I grew up, we didn't have tornadoes. (At least not the meteorological kind!) But we DID have hurricanes! I still remember Hurricane Hazel, which was certainly scary, as the hailstones hit the windows and lightning and high winds raged on into the night (actually, it seemed all dark during that hurricane). But it was also a bit exciting, too, perhaps because I didn't know any better. I was only 5 years old! <br /><br />A different, more profound fear hit, however, when I was in Texas, huddled with my two babies in the bathtub, pillows on top of us, as the threat of twisters approached uncomfortably closely. (We were living in the southern part of tornado alley.) The one I remember ended up knocking off the chimney of the school about two blocks away. Tornadoes were THE main reason I wanted out of Texas. #2 & #3 were tied - intense heat and fire ants.<br /><br />However, if we're talking SCARIEST night of my life? That was when the movie usher forced me back inside the theater showing the "Return of the Fly" and "The Alligator People." I had nightmares and terror of falling asleep for YEARS afterwards, long after I'd forgotten the instigation of it all.ChrisClickshttp://chrisclicks.net/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2431498412944656953.post-642072150447134952011-04-12T19:58:19.363-04:002011-04-12T19:58:19.363-04:00There was this tree in my neighbour's yard, Mr...There was this tree in my neighbour's yard, Mrs R. And it was hollowing, and had a crack in it. As kids, we used to toss sticks and toys and rocks in it, and the crack slowly widened and deepened, but the tree held. <br /><br />One summer, when I was 12, it was storming, and my mum was woken up by a crack and the sound of a thump against the house. Then the sirens went off, so my parents herded us all into the basement, and I shivered in my summer nightclothes and listened to the wailing of the wind and rain. The sirens stopped, and it was quiet for all of two seconds before lightning cracked and it started to storm again. <br /><br />We went upstairs to look out the bay window to see if we could see anything, but even when the lightning cracked, it was pitch black out - we couldn't even see the rain. I went back to bed and woke early early in the morning to the sound of chainsaws [to this day, my mother says she has no idea how I slept through the start of the sirens, or fell asleep to the storm, or slept through the chainsaws].<br /><br />Mrs R's tree, the one that had been widening and deepening, had finally done what it had been threatening to do for years, and cracked into two, with the smaller side crashing into our house, and the larger side in the yard. We lived in a neighbourhood built ~1910, and over 60% of the old oak trees fell. The tornado itself touched down in the park behind our house and the damage was more than trees; entire businesses were wiped out, the park was destroyed, much of historic downtown was also damaged. It was the worst storm my town had seen in a long time.<br /><br />Back to that tree, though. I was busy pretending to drag branches - and actually dragging them when the helicopters hovered above - when the damage contractors showed up, as ours was one of the few houses on the block that actually sustained damage. I hovered nearby and overheard as he told my parents that if the tree hadn't been widening and deepening, the entire thing would have fallen on the house and wiped out the entire back. <br /><br />The damage was listed as 'an act of God' and we fixed up the roof and moved that next summer. I go back to that memory a lot; call the weather what you will, but that tree wasn't 'an act of God.' My parents were saved from catastrophe by some stupid kids who couldn't leave well enough alone. It's the little things, right?atticushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15676373520806862998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2431498412944656953.post-35517327617464652532011-04-12T08:17:58.016-04:002011-04-12T08:17:58.016-04:00The closest tornado to me was one that shook the h...The closest tornado to me was one that shook the house in the middle of the night when I was about 17 or so. I believe it took some siding off, but the siding was always blowing off. <br /><br />Scariest night was when our two dogs chased a raccoon up the house right by my window in the middle of the night. A lot of barking and a very odd scrabbling sound. Scared the daylights out of me. The raccoon ended up at the top of a barn, I believe it escaped from there.Minettenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2431498412944656953.post-66607630556477402402011-04-12T00:55:31.673-04:002011-04-12T00:55:31.673-04:00I am not sure if I remember mine, though I can thi...I am not sure if I remember mine, though I can think of a few.<br /><br />A ban on tornadoes would be good. And one on hurricanes, and one on poverty, and one on communicable disease, and and and...Beverly Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13583916852802103533noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2431498412944656953.post-81382938472724430402011-04-12T00:11:14.779-04:002011-04-12T00:11:14.779-04:00The closest a tornado came to me was 1972. My mot...The closest a tornado came to me was 1972. My mother was home at the time and made us go into the basement, which I thought was dumb. My sister was more conventional than I was, so she went along with the ruse that it was important.<br />We had a radio tuned to the local AM station which was just a few blocks away. I used to experiment with minimalist "crystal sets" to pull in that station. The most minimal that worked was to attach a diode to one lead of an earphone and ground the other lead to the dial stop on a rotary telephone. The signal was so strong it even worked using a microphone instead of the ear phone. I mean the radio station played out the microphone when the microphone was between the diode and the telephone. Just to be clear the diode was waving around loose. No capacitors or coils or nothing but what I just said.<br />Anyway, the deejay in the radio hut in the large field surrounding the broadcast antenna was getting telephone reports of tornado sightings and it became plain to him that the tornado was headed right at him. His voice sounded very panicky and he was torn between running away and trusting in the brick bunker construction of his broadcast hut to protect him. His only window faced north so he had no way to see the tornado. It uprooted up a bunch of trees on our block. My brother and sister say it disturbed the roof on our house but they have retold the story to each other too many times to remember anything but the stories they tell.<br />My mother was very worried about our roof because it was under construction. <br />I'll stop now because it's past my bedtime. <br />Click my link to see an alternative ending to the Wizard of Oz. There's no place like Homo. There's no place like Homo.Deve isn't in Kansashttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6exm2Hi28Xwnoreply@blogger.com