Today is the first day that I really saw any significant tornado damage with my own eyes- and it happened only because Kathy was driving at the time (to drop me off in Kenosha at the KSO Youth Auditions) and she asked me if I was interested. And although I have to admit that my first inclination was to say “no,” I was too appalled at my seeming disinterest to say the word. So I said ‘okay’ and Kathy drove us through two different neighborhoods on the north side of Kenosha that sustained the big damage. (The most widespread damage in the county actually occurred southwest of Kenosha in Wheatland.) And I’m glad she did because it was good for me to be very forcefully reminded that this storm was about a whole lot more than the exciting photographs which I took and which have garnered a fair amount of attention. This is a storm in which houses were destroyed and precious possessions were lost and people were injured. . . and where people could so easily have been killed.
The experience of seeing some of the storm damage was Too Close for Comfort in two different ways. First of all, so many of the northside houses that bore the brunt of the storm were eerily similar to our own. . . and this house in particular (in the above photograph) in its color and its basic design. I’m sure I would have felt affected to see overturned trailer homes or a battered mansion – but to see what we saw today was especially poignant and sobering.
As we headed west on 18th Street towards Green Bay Road, we saw several sizable evergreen trees completely shorn of their upper half . . . and it was downright frightening to realize that we were about a mile and a half (if that) from Polly and Mark’s house. It was a close call for them and for their neighbors.
Kathy then told me something about the day of the tornado which I hadn’t yet heard. During the height of the storm, Polly went down in the basement with Lorelai, and of course it’s not a good idea to tell a three-year-old that there’s a tornado close by. So they were watching Peter Pan, but Polly was talking to Kathy on the phone and getting updates from her. Kathy, meanwhile, had both of the dogs leashed in case a sudden trip down to the basement was going to be necessary. . . and even at one point Kathy WAS in the basement, with the door open and the TV on full volume so she could still hear what they were saying about the storm. I am really impressed at people’s capacity to figure out what to do in those stressful moments when things get complicated, to say nothing of frightening and dangerous as well. I was reminded of that fact when talking today at the auditions with Kathy Ripley (her husband Jim is the music dept chair at Carthage- Kathy is a middle school band director in Kenosha) who had just begun after school rehearsal with her 5th grade band when the sirens began to sound. She was directed to take her students to the locker room – some of them crying – and she had to hold them there until the all clear. Talk about challenging. It was even trickier at Bose Elementary on the northside, because they lost power. Imagine trying to keep elementary kids calm under those kind of trying circumstances. (I’m glad it wasn’t my responsibility. I would have tried to soothe them by having them recite the titles of Verdi’s operas in the order in which they received their world premieres. I have such a way with little kids.)
One last word about looking at storm damage. . . As we drove around today, trying not to look like gawkers, I couldn’t help but think of my mom who would do the same thing after a big storm hit. I have vivid memories of us driving through Decorah to look at downed branches and the occasional broken window- she was just fascinated by that sort of thing- and I’m quite sure that we even drove all the way down to Story City, Iowa to look at damage from a tornado that tore through that little town. And I remember one another time when we were up at Breezy Point in northern Minnesota, staying at Aunt Gertrude’s cottage. I think all of the Bergs were there – northern and southern cousins- and Grandpa was there as well. One truly frightening night a huge storm blew threw, creating at least one sizable tornado – and at the height of the storm, with all of us huddled in the living room of that basement-less cottage, and all of us kids scared to death, we suddenly realized that Grandpa wasn’t there. . . he was in his little trailer which was parked in the driveway, and he spent the whole storm out there, reading. Incredible. The next morning, we went driving to see the storm damage and I have no recollection of seeing damaged structures (I’m sure there were some) but I can still see a huge hillside of tall trees which had been mowed down as those a gigantic hand had come along and bent all of these trees all the way down to the ground. I was probably too young to really take that in or to fully understand what I was seeing – but that picture will probably never ever leave me.
We like to think of ourselves as capable people, charting our own course, making things happen . . . and it’s important that we be reminded from time to time, one way or another, that there is a lot out there that is a lot bigger than we are. It’s disconcerting – but of course absolutely true.