Tornadoes

 Boy did we have Thunderstorms! There are so many things that Dad gave us, things that he Imparted in me, but how he took the scary out of the Oklahoma Tornadoes of my childhood might be the mightiest.

Late Spring and early summer in OKC, we heard tornado sirens regularly. Mom always had Gary England on the TV while we waited for Dad to get home from the office. On the afternoons we sat under a tornado watch, I could tell that Mom was anxious. I could see it on her face. Being the oldest girl, I watched Mom a lot. But as soon as Dad walked through the door, Mom took a deep breath and I knew that everything was okay.

"Who wants to go watch the Thunderstorm?" Dad would say as he walked in the house. And then, after he changed out of his suit, us kids would follow him out to the garage. Dad would then open up both garage doors and he'd line up lawn chairs across the openings.

The sky was always dark on these days, and the clouds were roiling. Lighting flashed and thunder boomed. Lori and Kay would scream. But Dad always had a smile on his face and kept us calm.

"Next time you see the lightning, start counting until you hear the thunder boom," he'd say, "Count how many seconds come before you hear it. We'll count each time. If the time between the lightening and the thunder grow closer, then we know the storm is moving toward us. If they get farther apart, we know the storm is moving away. " So that's what we did.

My Dad always made it fun. My brother, the only boy, the oldest, and my Irish twin, would often run out of the garage into the hail storm to show his Macho. I remember yelling at him to comeback in a few times when the lightning flashed. here was only once, after a siren, when Dad got up, closed the garage doors and took us quickly into the house. He called for Mom and led us all to the bathroom. After putting all four of us in the tub with Mom sitting on the floor, he left and came back with a mattress from one of the beds and tilted it over us in the tub. The tornado siren was still going off. It happened so fast, but I remember that Mom began to sing. Kay reached over and grabbed my hand. Mom's song was beautiful, and then it was over.

I was never really scared of tornadoes because of Dad. But Mom was scared of them. I always knew that. I stood in the hall once and listened to her call Dad at work. "You need to come home now Elmer. The storm is bad." That made me scared, so I played with my sisters and checked on Mom until Dad walked through the door. After that, everything was Okay.

One time, after a tornado touched down near our house,