In Like A Lion

When I was a kid, my kindergarten teacher taught us about the seasons. She shared a number of little sayings about the passage of the months, but the only one I can ever remember is the one she had for March. "In like a lion, out like a lamb," she said.

Yesterday's severe weather across the midwest brought that saying to mind last night along with a storm memory of my own and a cautionary tale from my grandparents Kate and Ira's beloved Hamilton County.

In 1999, my mother Helen wrote about living on the farm outside McLeansboro during the Great Depression. In the course of describing the place, she made an oblique reference to severe weather.

"The farm had three big barns, a chicken house and a smokehouse. Below the smokehouse was a fruit cellar where we took cover if a really threatening storm were brewing. One of our neighbor families (who Uncle Perry dubbed "the John Rabbits"--I don't even remember their real name) used the storm cellar more often than we did. They had lived through a cyclone or tornado, and just the sight of a dark cloud sent all of them hustling down the road to ask if they might take cover in our cellar. No one had basements, and the underground cellars--like Dorothy's in The Wizard of Oz--were our storm refuges."

DeSoto, IL after the 1925 Tri-State Tornado.

I chuckle, albeit nervously, when I read this for two reasons. First, I immediately think of my cousin Kathleen Layne and the time we rode out a tornado in Elgin (more on this later). Second, I am surprised that my mother wasn't aware that the "Tri-State Tornado"--the single deadliest and most severe (F5) tornado in recorded U.S. history--passed right by Ira's farm in 1925.

Granted, Helen was only six years old when they lived on the farm in 1930, and the family had moved to Elgin shortly after her brother Dean was born in 1922. Still, the event was very fresh in people's minds (as evidenced by the haste in which the John Rabbits went to ground). The storm started in Missouri and ended in Indiana, lasted three and a half hours and killed 695 people. Winds were up to 300 mph, and the storm maintained a forward average speed of 62 mph as it raced across the county. It obliterated Braden, the small hamlet just south of Ira's farm where Kate's sister Della had been born and killed 60 people in rural Hamilton County alone. Frankly, I find it a wonder that the neighbors didn't live in the storm shelter year round.

It is thanks to this storm that we have an Early Warning System (EWS) administered by the National Weather Service. In 1925, no such system existed and radio broadcasters were forbidden to use the word "tornado" for fear of causing widespread panic. Nearly 700 people died because they had no warning of what was coming. With a forward speed estimated as high as 70 mph, death, at least, came quickly.

Yesterday evening, I received a terse text message asking friends and family to pray for my niece, Kate, who, at that moment, was taking shelter as tornado sirens roared in Nashville. I immediately offered up a plea and turned on the television news to watch the storm unfold from a distance even as she, up close and in its midst, ran to ground and safety. The storm passed over, no less furious for not stepping down to earth, and set its course for places further east. While I was grateful for Kate's safety, I couldn't help be mindful of the less fortunate 30 people who lost their lives in Indiana and Kentucky.

Some time in the early 1970s, my sister Donna, my neighbor friend Craig Lieberman and I had run out of things to do. Bored and looking for adventure, we decided to sit at the end of the driveway and enjoy the thunderstorm rolling in from the south. Donna, seated between myself and Craig, held an open umbrella to shield all three of us from the anticipated rain. Across the street, our neighbor Mr. McDonald was working on one of his cars in the driveway. I looked up and marveled at how the sky, nearly black a moment ago, was now the most intense glass green as if one were looking at the world through a bottle of 7-Up.

Three things then happened at the same precise moment: "RUN!" yelled Mr. McDonald; "GET IN THE HOUSE!" screamed my mother from the open front door; "BAM!" the wind slammed into us like a wall of water. The three of us struggled to turn around and make our way up the driveway to the house, pushing against the wind like Sisyphus and his rock. I turned my face up to a loud, whirring sound and watched in disbelief as the next door neighbor's kiddie pool sailed like a frisbee over our heads and soared over the rooftops behind us. Donna, still between myself and Craig, struggled with the umbrella until she inadvertently tilted it back. The wind caught it and suddenly Donna was lifted into the air like Mary Poppins. Mom shrieked as Craig and I scrambled to grab her. The umbrella, overburdened with her weight, collapsed and set her down. Arm in arm, we made it into the garage where Mom hustled us inside and down to the basement where Kathleen--storm savvy and focused on survival--had long been firmly situated beneath the stairs.

To her credit, Kathleen did not say, "I told you so." She had been in the basement for hours before the storm hit. She didn't mess around with tornado warnings. Once a tornado watch was announced, she headed for the stairs. She was a veteran of scary weather, and she knew enough to pack a bag full of snacks and games to distract everyone--including herself--from what was happening above our heads. She understood what was involved and had the patience required to wait out the life of the storm--not just its peak.

In my mind, there were so many people in the basement that day. We played Battleship, Scrabble, Uno and Flinch. Something tells me that that memory has to be an amalgamation of all the times we hid ourselves away from the wrath of God and nature. I can recall glimpses of huddling downstairs in the dark without power hiding from a storm so severe and so longlasting that we brought down the mattresses off our beds. But whatever the specific instance or occasion, what made all of us feel safe was the fact that we were with our family and those we loved the most, focused on prayer and waiting on the Lord.