On June 1, 1947, a tornado tore through our community south
of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It resulted in the death of 34 people, including 21
children.
Our family had gone to Hot Springs that day and missed the actual
event. Returning, we found that the home just north of ours was gone—not
demolished, but gone—as was the home to the south of us. The storm destroyed 50
homes and damaged 500 others. A prominent farmer, his wife, and two children
died when the funnel lifted their home and turned it upside down in Bayou
Imbeau a couple of miles from us.
We would find that six teenagers died when the storm
demolished a house less than a city block from ours. The news reports graciously
called it “a rural youth center.” Actually, it was a vacant home where
teenagers gathered of a Sunday afternoon for a friendly craps game.
Our home, attached to our country grocery, suffered only
from a large oak tree blown over on the western end of the structure. That
night, National Guard troops stood guard in our neighborhood to prevent
looting. I’ve told before how my father gave away the contents of our grocery
to the victims, ultimately going bankrupt as a result of his goodness.
Today though, I’m thinking of another subject: embedded terror.
Although our family didn’t witness the storm, nor was our home destroyed,
terror invaded the area like a dreadful germ left by a malicious wanderer. My
best childhood friend would tremble and cry whenever a thunderstorm threatened,
as would our family dog, Bob. Both had seen the storm and bore witness to its power. The fear of
storms proved contagious to us all.
We feared the reoccurrence of another storm like the
children of Europe must have feared another war. It was a silent, insidious
terror that never left, lurking below the surface of our awareness. So it was,
sometime later, when a warning was issued for a storm headed directly at our
grade school.
I was in the third grade, in Miss Roundtree’s class. She was
hardly past 21 years of age and the heart-throb of every boy in school. We
would have faced a tribe of wild Apaches for her, even charged into a Nazi
machine gun nest, had she but given the fateful order.
A tornado though? That was something different. Few students
remained at the school at that moment. Only the children, of whom I was one,
who waited each afternoon, under the guidance of a teacher, for the arrival of
the school bus that transported “the country kids” home.
We had been shuffled into the northeast portion of the
school building, our elders assuming that any storm would arrive from the
southwest, from Texas. We knew how to “duck and cover” in preparation for
physical emergences, and were quite ready and willing to do so.
Then Miss Roundtree announced a new plan. There was no use
going to the trouble of diving under our desks unless the storm was actually
upon us. We needed a lookout. A dozen sets of eyes bore into the floor, hoping
to burn a hole wide enough to allow an escape from the honor.
It seemed, of a sudden, that everyone, save me, disappeared.
“You,” our dream-goddess said, pointing a finger at a spot between my eyes, “Come
with me.”
Off we went to the most southwestern classroom in the
building. I lacked the height to see through the window, so Miss Roundtree
pulled up a chair on which I could stand to watch for the terror, should it
appear. My instructions were simple. “When you see a funnel cloud coming, jump down, run fast, and warn us.
Then she left. Before her footsteps faded, I heard it
thunder.
I felt an electric charge on the back of my tongue, a sensation
with which I would become familiar as I passed through life. Awaiting the
unmanageable terror, I think I may have experienced, to some small degree, the fear
that must accompany any child heading off today to what should be the most
joyous and exciting period of their lives, the carefree wonder of school days.
I wonder how many instead, should they hear a sharp and unknown sound, will feel
that surge of electricity at the back of their tongues.
Unless you have felt it, in the singular and unwarranted way
a seven-year old might feel it, you have no idea what an evil organization the
National Rifle Association has become.
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| Terror requires eternal vigilance. |
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