THE TORNADO

One of my hobbies, if you can call it that, is genealogy. The reason I hesitate to call it a hobby is that it seems to have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. It was first researched by my parents and then carried on by me. My dad had done a lot of the research on his side of the family. In fact, it was nearly complete due to his years of work, membership in the Germans from Russia Society and their very complete records.

With the advent of the internet I started to help mom research her side of the family. This chore was a little more difficult. Mom had many lines of her family that had been in the new world for several centuries, the earliest of whom, it was later discovered, since the 1600s. After my dad passed away in the summer of 1997, Mom and I started our research in earnest with help from my cousin Maureen. We planned a genealogical research/family trip to the Midwest for May of 1998.

We should have noticed the black cloud hanging over the trip right away. About two hours from home a water delivery truck lost its load very nearly wiping us out (I was driving Mom’s Honda Accord). However we did arrive in Walla Walla, Washington to pick up Maureen without further incident. The next morning we were on our way. We figured two, maybe three days and we’d be at our cousin Pat’s and then at Aunt Ruth’s farm in South Dakota, our first stop on our way to Iowa, then Minnesota, North Dakota, then back home by way of Montana.

About an hour from Spokane, a warning light came on. We decided to stop at the Honda dealer in Spokane just to check things out, certain it couldn’t be anything serious, after all this was a nearly new car with 5000 miles on it. Wrong. The transmission needed to be replaced. The good news? It was on warranty. The bad news? It would take several days to get a transmission from Portland and then get the car running again. OK, so we were on our way on Sunday morning, Mother’s Day it turned out. We made good time and got all the way from Spokane to Hardin, Montana. This was going to be great. We’d have time the next day to go to Mount Rushmore (Maureen had never been there) before going to Pat’s for dinner. Going through Wyoming the weather was fine. By the time we got to South Dakota the it was horrible. A driving rain all day. We turned off the exit to Mount Rushmore but it was soon very clear that we the visibility was so poor that we wouldn’t be able to see Mount Rushmore. The rest of I-90 from Rapid City to the little town of Plankinton wasn’t any better. Thankfully the there wasn’t much traffic. We arrived at my cousin in the middle of a horrific thunderstorm. I’m still being teased about the clap of thunder that was so loud I almost dove under the dining room table. We found out the next day that lightning hit a house a block away! We left there to drive out to the farm. One thing I love about the Midwest – you can see the lightning lighting up the night from all around in a big storm like this. A big deal coming from the Puget Sound area where we rarely get thunderstorms, much to my chagrin. Our five-day visit at the farm was uneventful weather-wise.

Then it was time for us to travel on to Iowa where we were going to do visit the cemetery where my great-grandfather is buried and also do some genealogical research in the towns of Algona and Bancroft. We stopped at another cousin’s for lunch and arrived at Algona to spend the night. We got up early to the news that Frank Sinatra had died. But we went on to the historical society in Algona and found out where our ancestors had lived and were on our way north to the little town of Bancroft where my grandmother was born. We had the radio on and were listening to news about tornado warnings or some such thing. This was foreign to us from the Pacific Northwest and we weren’t sure what it all meant. They were giving warnings for different counties. We knew what county we were driving in (we had been doing genealogical research, after all) but we didn’t know the names of surrounding counties so where the storm was going to or had been meant nothing to us.

It wasn’t until we met up with a construction crew at the road where we going to be turning off to the old farm where my grandmother was born that we knew something was up. They suggested we drive the three miles into town for shelter until the storm blew over. We figured he knew best even though there was little evidence of a storm brewing about at this time. We took shelter at a small café with a few dozen others where we had a cup of coffee. It did get a little bit windy during this time but quickly subsided and it seemed safe to leave. As it was nearly 1:00 and the library opened at 1:00 we decided to wait and go to the library before going out to the cemetery and the old homestead.

We went to the library where we quickly learned that the cemetery records were located at the furniture store down the street. Mom and Maureen left me at the library to go through microfilm of old newspapers while they walked the block down to find some information about the cemetery.

Soon I was so absorbed in reading microfilm that I paid no mind to the weather outside which was quickly changing for the worst. The husband of one of the librarians stepped in and told her to take her car home and put it under the cover to protect if from the expected hail, but I paid it no mind. I’d seen hail before and silently scoffed at the idea that you actually would have to put a car under cover to protect it. I kept finding information about the Inman and Neelings families from the late 1800s, printing things off and finding more. There’s nothing like an excited genealogy researcher finding helpful information! My excitement was pretty short-lived. One of the librarians soon came over and told me they were going to close down the library and I needed to seek cover underground as her husband, a tornado spotter, had called and a tornado had been spotted nearby and the library didn’t have a basement. They did say I could go to the Catholic church so I quickly called over to the furniture store. I was told to come over there as they had a basement. I quickly gathered my things and ran out to the car. By that time it was so windy the rain was hitting horizontally. That less-than-one-block drive was one of the longest of my life. I parked out front and ran into the store where the owner, his son, Mom and Maureen were casually (almost too casually in my opinion) looking at cemetery records as the sky was getting darker and darker. It was 2:30 in the afternoon and as black as night.

Then the lights went out. Still no one got too excited, they just got out their flashlights. I think we were more excited to find that not only was my great-grandfather buried at the local cemetery, but his parents were buried there as well!! And now we had his mother’s name. Our glee was short-lived.

Then came the sound of sirens. Tornado sirens. The store owner and his son later told us it was the first time they ever remember hearing them. The son peaked out the door – he could hardly hold it open—before ushering us down rickety old stairs into a dank, dark, musty, basement. This basement was so old it had dirt walls! Still I think I was more afraid of bugs and spiders than I was of a tornado. Fortunately we didn’t have to stay down there very long. Obviously our plans for the day were postponed. Our trip to the cemetery would have to wait for the next day. We figured even though the day hadn’t turned out as planned, it certainly made for an interesting story to be told later. Oh, and the tornado? For all the excitement, the wind, the darkness, I would have expected an F4 at least. However, it barely registered on the Fujita Scale. Little damage was done. But we were still glad we weren’t caught out in the middle of the cemetery when it struck.