Hurricanes and Tornadoes

We have been captivated by TV coverage of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma the last few weeks.  A friend from the Houston area and a cousin from Beaumont were here during Harvey.  They could not return home until last week.  Fortunately, their homes were unharmed.  The devastation has been painful to watch.  I am having trouble even imagining that much water.

I grew up in tornado country.  As a child, I worried because we did not have a storm cellar.  The grandmother of one of my cousins had a little lantern which was the only item salvaged when a tornado demolished her home in Clyde, Texas.  I heard the story many times of her home blowing away while she was safe in the storm cellar.  This particular storm was in 1938.  Fourteen people died and over forty were injured.  A freight train and boxcars overturned.  Clyde had an earlier tornado in 1895.  Another tornado in 1950 left five people dead.  The last tornado in the little town was in 1989.  There is an old joke that no one in Clyde is going to heaven because the Lord is coming in a cloud and everyone will be in their cellars.

We moved to Harlingen, TX, shortly after Hurricane Beulah.  People were still pointing out the damage. It was as though they measured time before and after Beulah.  We lived approximately forty miles inland from South Padre Island.  When the first hurricane started toward us, Ken and his co workers were at a conference in San Antonio.  The families proceeded to get the houses secured and depart for San Antonio.  Our son, Kevin had an incubator.  He had hatched eggs and raised the chicks.  Our car was loaded.  A neighbor was to care for the dogs.  I told Kevin to open the chicken pen gate so the birds could fly into trees or take shelter wherever they needed to.  He adamantly informed me that he was not going.  He had hatched the eggs and raised those chickens.  He was staying behind to care for them.  He was not about to shirk his duty to his chickens.  I explained that he had no choice.  We were not taking the chickens and he was not staying behind.  Quite an argument followed.  He was very upset by the time I finally got him into the car.

It had already begun to rain when we left.  It was eerie driving past closed and boarded up stores, buildings and houses.  Fortunately, the storm caused little wind damage or flooding.  The chickens were safe and happy to see us when we returned.

We left the area and moved to Georgetown, TX.  Fifteen years later we returned to Harlingen.  We boarded windows and prepared for several more hurricanes before leaving the area in 2000.  We are back in tornado country again.