Can No One Stop the Wind?
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Robert Frost
I remember watching The Wizard of Oz on the big screen in the movie theater. I’m not sure how old I was, but I was terrified of the flying monkeys. How could you defend yourself against something so malevolent that it could come swooping down on you from the air without warning? I seem to remember finding myself under the theater seat, and my dad coaxing me to come out. I had no idea those creatures weren’t the scariest part of the movie.
I lived in Dallas in 1957. Through 4th and 5th grade, my friend and I walked home from school together every afternoon. Winds were a part of life in Dallas. The broad plains of Texas offered no obstacle to interfere with them, so they swept at will across the state almost daily. I’d was used to them. That day was no different. My friend and I clutched our books to our chest and ducked our heads down to try to protect our eyes from the bullets of dust which were assaulting around us. But above us, fierce dark clouds flattened the horizon as far as I could see, and the sky turned an ominous eerie green—the only time before or since I’ve ever seen such a phenomenon. Though it was only a few blocks home, I could tell my friend was scared. So was I.
The wind increased in ferocity. My friend (to this day, I can’t remember her name), who was considerably smaller than I, shrieked as she was blown against the six foot high chain link fence on the playground sidewalk next to us. Her books and papers flew over the fence and across the field. I could hear other kids screaming as the youngest ones were knocked to the ground or rolled across the tarmac. I’m sure the school staff was already outside working to help them, but I only saw my friend struggling against the wind as it pinned her against the rusted steel lattice work. I didn’t know what to do. My friend was sobbing. I tried to pull her free with one hand, but my parents had drilled into my head never to lose my schoolbooks as they would have to pay for them if I did. I began to cry.
At that moment, a car screeched up to the curb, and a door slammed. My friend’s dad came racing across the street and pulled his daughter free of the fence. He lifted her with one arm and wrapped the other one around me as he half-dragged us to the shelter of his car. We both collapsed on the back seat, our faces stained with tears and mud, our ragged breaths slowing as our terror receded. Once we reached my house, my friend’s dad helped me out of the car. It took both he and my mother to hold the door open for me against the force of the wind. But worse was coming.
I not sure when my dad got home, but I remember the air raid sirens shouting across the city. Outside our windows, paper and garbage were blowing past, hooking for a moment on a porch pillar or an automobile in a drive-way and then wresting free to fly again down the street to the next block. My dad yelled at us to get to the center of the house. My mother, holding my little sister, pushed my brothers and I into the hallway away from the window.
In those days only the very wealthy could afford central air conditioning, so our house and those of our neighbors had evaporative coolers mounted in living room windows. Ours sat on a wood frame that I could hear shaking as the winds increased. My dad raced to the bedroom and got several of his belts off his tie rack, connecting them to each other as he ran, and building a strong leather rope. He forced the window around our cooler open, lassoed the cooler with the leather cable, and braced it around his back, leaning into the room against the wind. If the cooler broke loose, it would be a deadly projectile to anything in its way.
The winds shrieked against the walls of the house; I could hear tiles from the roof breaking off and flinging themselves into the yards around us. The sky was so filled with water that I could see actual heavy green waves rolling in the air from the turbulence. A fearsome ocean in the sky. Then a whooshing sound like a train passing a long way away began. Windows shuddered. The walls seemed to take in a deep breath, then exhale. My mother turned to stare down the hall out the large plate glass window in the living room. A funnel was forming somewhere across town—maybe 10 or 15 miles away. It dropped from the flat, dark layer of those churning clouds and touched ground. My brothers and I began to whimper. My mother held us tighter.
“Max,” she yelled. “Get away from the window!”
“I can’t let go of this thing, “ my dad yelled back as he groaned against the force of the wind slamming the cooler back and forth, threatening the sidewalls of the house.. “It’ll fly straight through our neighbors window. They have little kids in that house!” Then the rain began.
With every lightening flash now, we could see across the city from us, the funnel writhing and twisting as it tore through downtown–so huge it spewed trees, pieces of buildings, even cars in its wake–a horrifying reminder of The Wizard of Oz. The air raid sirens blew on and on. Later, the news reported that a Category 3 tornado had taken out a good part of the metropolitan area. Ten people lost their lives—including three children in a single family.
It took months to clean up the disaster left in the wake of the storm. Today, I read reports on the Internet that there are still places in the city where the scars of that afternoon remain. Since then, I’ve watched weather reports with care, and a stretch of flat, dark clouds sends me into the house for its relative safety. I’ve always wondered why people like to watch horror movies on Halloween. Real life is terrifying enough.