Gary Panter blog

I was a nice little Christian boy and when I was small I used to pray that there would be a giant tornado and electrical storm, but that no one would get killed. And there often were, so I guess my prayers came true. No one I knew got killed and I never lived in a town that was destroyed, but I visited a few scenes of destruction.

Talihina, Oklahoma, where my grandparents lived, was in the tornado belt; meaning that they had lots of tornados around there in Southeastern Oklahoma and so lots of homes had storm shelters out back or off to one side.

A storm shelter is a concrete or brick or sod bunker with a corrugated tin door that usually doubles as a cellar for storing onions and garlic bunches and canned jelly, as well as emergency supplies and a kerosene lantern, candles and a bench or mattress. The storm shelters I was in usually had a spit can, because a lot of the folks up there dipped snuff in those days.

It was exciting when a vast supercharged electrical storm came up and the sirens went off; everybody, all the neighbors, ran for the nearest shelter, pelted by hail and buffeted by the blasting air and stinging rain under dark green skies rent by thunder and lightning.

People got to talk a lot in shelters waiting out the storm. I wish I could remember more than the broken fragments of stories that I do remember heard in nights with men women and children sitting on mattresses or box springs covered with quilts, but the rain and hail and wind pounding the tin door made it hard to hear what was being said.

The fragments of stories that I do remember involved horse swapping stories; unfortunate accidents involving horses and cows and cars and tools and other folks; embarrassing counter-accusations and teasing; memories of great storms experienced in the past and the damage that they inflicted and the strange feats that they effected. I was most stuck with the stories of the taming of wild sons by chaining them to trees and whipping of them with bullwhips. Rugged men bragging about how old their kids were when they last would submit to be bullwhipped. It seems that you were grown when you could take the bullwhip away from your Daddy and chain him to the tree and bullwhip him. I guess there were some tough times to be had by all back then.

Then there would come a sound thrashing on the door and someone would unlatch the tin door and it would fly open, as if jet propelled, and there would be more people wanting in and they would come dripping and staggering down into the muddy hole and everyone would scoot over to make room; or sometimes, there would be no one out there and it was just the pounding of the storm. People would debate about whether there was someone out there and should they unlatch the door or not, because a lot of storm came in when they opened the door. Sideways rain and ice.

The storm cellar we most often ended up in was at the neighbors across the street from my grandparents house. It was owned by two old fat brothers and a sister named Cluffy, Big Boy and Willie. They all dipped snuff and my grampa Boss dipped snuff so that was a lot of spit cans right there. They were nice people. Willie was a hunchback and wore big knife-shaped shoes with soles of vastly different thicknesses.

When you came out of the storm shelter the air was fresh. Sometimes there was hail deep on the ground. Or plums. Sometimes there were broken trees or sizzling power lines. The storm would be a black flashing wall in the sky moving away from you, going over the horizon creating excitement for a new audience.

I never saw a tornado as a child. I sure wanted to see one.
I saw some humdingers of electrical storms, though. And that's some consolation.