Back in 1974, right after I got my driver’s license, I was sitting up in my room, pouting. I did a lot of pouting then. I was mad at my mother because I was supposed to babysit that night and I wanted to drive. It was a new family for me and Mom wanted to meet them. She told me that if they wanted me to babysit that they would have to come get me. So I was sitting on my bed, madder than a hornet and trying to think of something I could say that would change Mom’s mind. I was staring out the window and noticed that the sky had split in half. The top half was black and the bottom half was gray. And I saw this thin line coming out of the top half that looked just like a tornado. But it couldn’t be. This was Louisville, Kentucky. Tornados don’t hit Louisville. They hit Indiana and Missouri and Illinois and Kansas and Oklahoma. They don’t hit Louisville.
But I thought I would play along. I went downstairs and told my brother that a tornado was coming and we had to go to the basement. I grabbed the dog and he grabbed a bag of chips. I asked him where the transistor radio was and he said it didn’t matter because the batteries had died. I had learned in school exactly what corner of the basement we should go to and we got down on the floor, and waited.
I’m not a patient person. It seemed that it took forever to hit. But all of a sudden it got really quiet and then I guess it was over. We looked at each other like, is it over, and then we decided that it surely had to be and that we would venture out of the basement as survivors. We didn’t look for any damage when we came upstairs. We went straight out the front door into the yard and looked around. Everyone else in the neighborhood was outside too.
We were so lucky that day. We didn’t have any damage but four houses down all of their windows blew out of their house. They were lucky. About a mile or two from our house entire neighborhoods were blown apart. Old neighborhoods, new neighborhoods, the twister did not discriminate. It wasn’t just houses that were gone. It was neighborhoods that were gone. Of course we didn’t know that then. We just knew that we had survived a tornado. We didn’t have power and we didn’t have a phone but we were just fine, thank you.
I found out later that my sister had ridden out the tornado at a health club. They ushered everybody into the locker room and had them sit down on the floor against the walls, ala grade school tornado drills. My sister still talks about the woman sitting next to her singing “do Lord oh do Lord oh do remember me”. Oh Lordy. My mom couldn’t get home fast enough. She was worried sick. My dad had to spend the day in Bardstown and he was heading home. He said that he was chased home by a tornado.
When everyone got home I asked my mom about babysitting. She told me I wasn’t going anywhere. Since the phones were still out I couldn’t get in touch with the people I was supposed to sit for. When the dad showed up to pick me up my mom told this man that she had never met that I wasn’t going anywhere and that he didn’t need to go anywhere. I was so embarrassed. I think they asked me to babysit again but not much.
It seemed as though the entire neighborhood stayed outside that night. It was like we all needed to be together.
This was before 24 hour a day news coverage. We didn’t know the extent of the damage until later. We found out later that we were not the only area that had damage. There were storms throughout Kentucky and southern Indiana. What hit us was one of 75 tornados that hit our region that day. Knowing that, and then seeing some of the damage first hand was just humbling.
I can remember when the movie Twister came out. We loved it although it was a little unrealistic. We went to the theater to watch it. We bought the dvd when it came out. We still watch it on TV. I think we love the scene with the flying cow. I always worried about that cow. But that’s the movies. That’s not real life. But, I came to realize that’s all a lot of people had to experience about a tornado.
You might want to check out the movie, Twister.
We had a tornado hit our community last week. It hit about 1/4 mile from my office. I was not there. I had made a delivery in Fancy Farm so I was about 8 miles away. I came out of the business and everyone was standing in the parking lot taking pictures with their cell phones. I thought they were taking pictures of a rainbow since a real bad storm had just gone through. One of the guys opened the door for me and said “you’ve got to see this, it’s a tornado”. I didn’t believe him. I told him that they were seeing things. When I looked I saw the sky split in two but I didn’t see the funnel. That was because it was behind a group of trees. When it moved I realized that I wasn’t a good judge of distance but that it was near my office. And more importantly it was in line to hit my kids’ school. I stood there for a second and then I told them I had to go back to work. I told them I needed to make sure my kids were okay. They told me that I wouldn’t get anywhere near that area. They told me that since I was so close I should just go home. They had lost power so I decided to go home and make sure our power was fine.
That was a mistake. You see now is the time of 24 hour a day news. The local channels break in for any kind of breaking news. But they love to break in for weather alerts. And they were already reporting on everything. By this time it had hit. But they couldn’t get any news out fast enough. I did find out that my kids were fine, that they were on lock down. Jimmy called me to report as well. He was scoping out all the damage. I told him to go by my office and make sure everything was okay. He didn’t think he could get through. He was right. They turned him around. The kids didn’t get out of school until about 4:30. The kids taking the bus had to wait longer. There was nowhere for the buses to go. I finally called Jimmy and told him to quit rubbernecking and come home. As soon as he did he was ready to go out again. I told him we needed to wait. We didn’t need to get in anybody’s way. We waited about 5 minutes.
Katie had gone into work and took John with her. We had to pick him up. But if we could I wanted to go by the office before just to make sure everything was okay and to turn everything off. The road in was uncertain. We weren’t sure if the roads would even be open. But one of Jimmy’s friends called and said we could get through. Honestly, I wish we hadn’t. The path of destruction was not wide. But the path was devastating. The first place we saw, Grandpa’s Attic was hit hard. But it was still standing. The business next to it, owned by our cousin was gone. It looked like a bulldozer had taken it down. There was only rubble. We heard that there were injuries there but not life threatening. We heard that they had to cut Jimmy’s cousin out of the wreckage. The houses on the other side of the street were hit too. But it looked like more damage to the trucks and trees than the houses. We didn’t think that was where it started but that was obviously the path it took.
As we turned to cut over to my office we found trees down here and there but this was the back side of the schools (elementary, middle and high schools). It seemed on that side of the street nothing had been touched. And going to my office there wasn’t any more damage. We heard that if we had taken a left instead of a right we would been in all of the devastation. But my office was fine. The power had been out but was now back on. I turned everything off and we headed to pick up John.
What was so weird was that the rest of the town seemed oblivious to what had happened. I knew that wasn’t true because Facebook was blown up with the tornado. But it just seemed like business as usual. We decided to eat pizza and then head back home. Of course Jimmy, the rubbernecker wanted to show John all the damage. That would have been fine except I was driving. He kept saying “turn here”. I kept saying “we can’t get down there”. But we did go places that we shouldn’t have. It was like the people who had just lost their homes needed time to grieve, not to be a tourist attraction. We did go to see if a friend’s farm had been hit.
The road to their farm is pretty short. We saw some trees down and some shingles off of roofs. But then we got near the farm and there were about 15 trucks pulled up. The tool shed had lost half of the building, the grain bins were crushed in like you would do to a coke can you just finished, there was equipment thrown into each other. I saw my friend and we got out to see if there was anything we could do. They were already dismantling the tool shed. There was heavy equipment everywhere. Her husband was out of town and was on his way back. But all these people, wow. She said that she knew some but not everyone. She said that they had just started pulling up and going to work. I asked her what I could do and she said that she couldn’t think of anything. It reminded me of when I was young and I would ask my mother if there was anything she wanted me to do. She would always say “look around”. I felt so helpless. I looked around but what could I do? Two by six boards were twisted. Entire trusses were snapped in half. It became obvious to me that we were in the way. So I told her to let me know of anything she needed and got out of the way.
And I kept telling Jimmy that. We’re in the way. Let’s get out of everybody’s way. Finally we headed home.
In the days since the storm we found that 10 people were injured, none life threatening. Twenty-five homes were lost. Numerous businesses were damaged but it appears that everyone is going to rebuild or find another building. But the people that came into town to help, and the townspeople themselves have gone out of their way to do whatever they could.
This storm could have been so much worse. If it had stayed on its path it would have hit at least one of those three schools. There were over 2000 children in those schools. Our sheriff held a news conference and made sure that everyone knew that this was bad, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. He said even though he’s not an overly religious man that he knows that it was the hand of God that veered that tornado away from those schools. It hit about 1/4 mile down the road.
Steven Elder put this together and put it up on Facebook. Everyone has it as their Facebook profile picture.
In this day of 24/7 news coverage, and social media, everyone with a camera or cell phone instantly becomes a news reporter. One of the most eerie videos was posted by a City of Mayfield Police Officer. He didn’t move, he let the storm do that. When I saw that video, and I saw the tornado on path to hit my kids’ school, I immediately bowed my head and prayed in thanksgiving for my kids, and the rest of the kids in our community. I know there were a lot of people saying a prayer of thanks that night.
To view the Mayfield Police Department Video click here.