April 16, 1998

Dear Patty,

It's tornado time here in Missouri. We're at the eastern end of Tornado Alley, just about the spot where the bowling pins would be set up. Not that we have a history of disasters. A killer storm hasn't come through in almost 50 years.

A tornado struck the unwarned city hard early on a Saturday evening in May 1949, killing 22. Seventy-two people were hospitalized, 202 houses and 19 businesses were destroyed, and at least that many were damaged.

The recent worse death and devastation in Alabama are a reminder of the power to be reckoned with.

At least we aren't as defenseless now. Every spring, the TV weathermen work overtime tracking oncoming storms. School children practice tornado drills, and parents stay up late until the all-clear is heard.

Some days it's just a bit like London during World War II, though the Nazis were more terribly predictable than the weather is.

The weatherman who was on the local TV station for many years is still revered. He's personable but I think the affection flows from his reassuring demeanor and the fact that he was always there to warn us of approaching danger. He was a kind of guardian angel delivering messages of protection.

His tools were a marker and a perfectly modulated voice. Now the weathermen have Doppler radar that can predict to the minute when a storm cell will move through towns in the region. It's certainly more specific but somehow not more reassuring than Don McNeely saying, "The storm has passed us by."

My mother is a tornado fatalist. It was my dad who stayed up watching the TV reports and peeking out the front door. If the hour was late, she'd go to bed. Mrs. Que sera, sera.

Her attitude was the same even after my brother survived a bad tornado in a town to the south by prostrating himself on the floor of his bathroom. Outside afterward, he discovered the house had been torn from its foundation.

Tornado warnings were posted Monday. The instruction came to take shelter. This time, Mom led her frightened granddaughter, Casey, to the basement with a radio, a flashlight and a stuffed bunny rabbit.

DC loves storms the way some people love horror movies. In fact, "Twister" is one of her favorites. She pretends to hate stormy weather but her eyes twinkle as she covers the computer with plastic just in case a cottonwood branch should break free in the backyard and crash through a window.

Tornadoes are reminders of the awesome natural force all life springs from and its potential to create and annihilate. "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," atom-splitter Robert J. Oppenheimer said after the first A-bomb test. He was quoting the Bhagavad Gita.

Creation and destruction are inseparable parts of the same force that infuses each of us, enables us to create both magnificence and havoc. We get to choose.

I don't know if Nature has a mind of its own, but I'm glad most people now believe in the love rather than the wrath of God. I find no malevolence in these whirling dervishes that appear in the spring.

Storms are like our own occasional angry outbursts -- necessary to clear the air.

The world was washed clean Tuesday morning, the sky sapphire blue, the air intoxicating. As I write Wednesday night, more storms are bearing down on us and a warning has been issued. The creation never stops.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.