Living Through an F-5 Tornado and its Aftermath

The1965 photograph above is of my husband standing on the back steps of what was left of the farmhouse where he grew up. A tornado hit the farm twice, ten years apart. The last time it was an F-5 and they couldn’t rebuild. Strange stories came out of that tornado like the fact that Don’s 24th birthday cake still sat on the kitchen table on the other side of the window on the far left in the photo---not a fleck of debris on it. The second story and roof above the cake were gone. The wall that was still standing upright to the right of Don had a clothesline running between it and a tree and when the clothesline was cut that wall fell in, starting a chain reaction that took down the wall with the window. (If you look hard enough you can see the clothesline on the right side in the photo.) 

Other strange things included one of their work horses was found miles away after the tornado passed---too far for him to run in such a short period of time. Not a scratch on him while the other horses who ran for the near-by woods weren't so lucky. A heavy china cabinet with a wave-glass front toppled over on its face and while three legs snapped off the wave-glass doors were intact. I still have a set of circa 1910 ivory elephants that were inside that china cabinet. Once a set of seven classic elephants but one was lost to the tornado and another suffered a broken leg. Which elephant got lost---happiness, wisdom, prudence, royal dignity, invincible power, longevity or intelligence---was debated a time or two over the years.

The first tornado didn't do as much physical damage but a scandal came out of it because the local insurance man had scammed all the people who 'bought' policies from him. He took their payments for years but never sent them into the main company to actually secure the policies he 'sold.' Victims like Don's parents were left to rebuild on their own. 

Just days before the second tornado Don's dad had bought his first tractor, a bright blue Ford and the barn it was parked in went flying all over the fields that they previously worked with a team of horses, but the tractor didn't get a scratch on it. The only work that tractor ever did was when the family used it to help drag what was left of the house and barn out to a gravel pit on the farm that they turned into a burn pit. Someone in the family had to camp out 24/7 on the driveway with a rifle close by to stop the looters who came along soon after the tornado left the area. And to the day he died, Don would never pass up a Salvation Army bucket without putting money in it. During that cleanup period someone from the organization would hike across the field to the burn pit every day to give the workers coffee and sandwiches so the women folks didn't have to stop to make lunches. Their job was to comb though the debris and sort out what could be salvaged and what had to be burned or buried.

In the decade that followed the tractor was parked in a garage at a house his parents moved into back in town. Eventually, Don bought it from his parents and he still had the tractor when he died twelve years ago---in storage most of that time. Even after he had a massive stroke in 2000 Don couldn't be talked into parting with that 1955 Ford. I finally sold it as an antique tractor after his death and even though I got a good price for it, it was a break-even thing if you factored in the decades of storage fees we paid for Don to hold on to a piece of his family history.  Some might see it as $8,000 thrown down a rabbit hole---as storage fees generally are---but it was his money that he worked hard for and I can think of worst things he could have done his money. I was glad to see it go, though, and I tell myself that Don would be happy that the buyer planned to enter that tractor in antique farm equipment shows. That was Don's retirement dream, taken away from him by his stroke.

The 160 acres of land that made up the farm had nothing left on it for years except a silo and 60 acres of virgin timber. For decades we could still go up there and pick rhubarb and raspberries and hike in woods. But eventually after the four brothers inherited the farm it was a source of many arguments between the head-strong brothers. Two wanted to develop it into a housing project and two wanted to turn it into a campground with hiking trails. After a half a decade of debating and getting no where, the county came along and wanted to buy it. They agreed to sell, but the family tried to get the buy/sell agreement to include the right to name the proposed 'public park' they claimed they wanted it for but the county was adamant that would be a deal breaker. After the sale went through we found out why. It wasn't a family picnic park they wanted the land for, they built a sports complex there and the corporation fronting the money to develop it wanted the naming rights. After the sale, Don could never drive by the old farm without bad feelings coming back up. He felt they'd been lied to and that they never would have agreed to sell if a family picnic park had not been the carrot held out to them. He always wondered if one of his brothers had clued the county in on how to sway the others to sell.

We humans are resilient creatures, aren't we. We go through horrific events like losing our homes, our jobs, our health or people who are important to us but somehow most of us manage to come out the other side of our tragedies to rebuild our lives again and again, and to dream again. But if you look deep enough those horrific events leave scars behind on our souls. 

Living through two tornadoes effected Don. Not only did he take storm warnings seriously and would go to the basement when the weather bureau issued their warnings. I believe if he hadn't stood  watching things like old license plates, his childhood pedal car, live chickens and 10 gallon milk cans spinning upward he wouldn't have spent his entire adult life trying to buy back his childhood in the form of all the toys and family pieces handed down through the generations. He couldn't pass up an estate sale, garage sale, auction or antique store without stopped.

This has been the backstory about how one memorabilia collector was born. All collectors have a backstory---whether it's the good stuff worth big bucks they collector or their houses are over taken by plastic recycling and rotten, bug-infested food. I'm grateful my obsessed collector was the former (sentiment driven) and not the latter (insecurity driven). If you've ever watched the TV show, Hoarders, you already know that they both have a common thread of a loss in their lives that contributes significantly to their need to surround themselves with whatever they collect, be it trash or treasures.  ©

Until Next Wednesday. 

This photo is of the farm before the tornado destroyed it.