Storm Story

We had known the weather was threatening a thunderstorm when we went to bed, but were startled awake a little before midnight by the ringing of the phone. It was our son, Greg, with whom we’d spent the evening at a get-together for our grandson, Adam’s, 17th birthday. “Mom are you guys okay?” he asked anxiously. “There’s been a terrible storm over here!” They live only a dozen blocks away, but we must have slept through the disturbance.

He told me the noise had been terrific, with wind and hail, and the crashing of tree damage. “Do you have power?” he asked, “Ours hasn’t gone off, but it probably could.” I flipped the light switch, and sure enough, we had no power. Peering into the darkness out the window, I couldn’t discern any damage. Greg and his father had been concerned about a questionably-safe tree between our house and the neighbors, and had been planning to cut it down soon. “Did that tree fall on your neighbor’s car?” he questioned.

I would have to wait until morning to find out the tree hadn’t been blown down. Early risers, we couldn’t go into the kitchen, make coffee, or make an early breakfast as we sometimes did. We sat in the darkness reminiscing about experiences with hurricanes in Mississippi. Then when the sky grew less dark, we sat on the porch swing in the balmy air.

“Let’s go see if anything is open and get something to eat!” my husband suggested. Hurriedly dressing and without a light to put on makeup, I joined him in the car in a quest for breakfast. All was dark in our immediate neighborhood, but lit up along a main highway. Our hopes rose. Drawn along by the sight of the “golden arches” standing like a beacon, we pulled into the drive of Macdonalds. Several employees were staggered along the drive out front, and when we lowered the window a young lady said, “We have free coffee, but no food yet.” We gratefully took the coffee.

“Maybe the donut shop is open,” I ventured. There was a vehicle outside when we drove in, and we recognized a woman in pajamas as the owner. Howard asked if she had any donuts. She went in and brought out two pastries in a paper sack (which turned out to be sugar-sodden and so sweet we couldn’t eat them.)

“How much?” my husband asked, offering her two dollars, to which she generously replied, “Oh, just one’s enough.” It was typical of the air of conviviality that prevailed that morning. There were widespread outages along our route, and when we got home the electricity had not come back on.

Still hungry, we called a restaurant at the edge of town, and they were open. Nothing ever tasted so good! Evidently, a lot of other people thought so, too, judging by the record crowd at breakfast. Animated conversation flowed with words like “tornado,” “cellar,” and “no power” punctuating the air. We were all blessed to be safe, and about 11 o’clock, I was thankful to be able to call to my husband in our back yard, “The power is on!” It had been a long 12 hours.