Tuesday, June 1

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June 1, Tuesday - Rained real hard this morning. Went to Dr. and Kroger this afternoon. I know so many nice people from there. Talked to Mickey. Stormed and we went to Wurtz's basement.

June 2, Wednesday - Not much doing today. Sultry - Marv bought tackle.

June 3, Thursday - Opened the bait shop today. There'll be no going any place now.

Part of the magic of living in the Flyover is the weather. Four seasons in one week is not out of the question, and after the first of April, the sky will open up and punish you with huge storms - torrential rains, hailstones the size of oranges, and tornadoes.

The inhabitants of these lands have created tornado sirens. When activated by local authorities, these sirens wail to warn everyone that their lives are in danger. The people, thus warned, instead of taking shelter, go outside and with their necks craned like turkeys in the rain, stare at the lowering sky. Many of these same people, when they see an actual tornado heading their way, will head underground and take shelter, if only at the last possible moment. Other people, like my dad, who grew up in Fort Scott, Kansas; feel the approaching storm, and the second the sky turns that sickly shade of green, dive underground like a prairie dog being chased by a coyote. When we lived in Fort Scott in the early '50s, a small tornado neatly removed the back wall of our house on Washington Street. The storm came and went while my mom was trying, unsuccessfully, to squeeze her backside under her big iron bed. We had no basement.

Basements are a necessity in tornado alley, and many people wouldn't begin to consider living in a house without a basement. Since our basement was a small and highly aromatic fish bait factory, it was not unusual, given enough warning, to seek shelter in the basements of friends and relatives with "normal" basements. This time around we went to the Wurtzes, my aunt Gladys and her husband Lawrence, who lived in a basement apartment at Eighth Street and Chestnut Avenue.

With less warning, we made do at home. On May 20, 1957, all manner of hell broke loose in the plains. Thirty-five confirmed tornadoes took aim at parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Concordia, Kansas was hit by a large tornado accompanied by hail that measured seven inches in diameter. A regulation softball is half that size - 3.8". 

At that time, mom was working at a small Kroger store at 27th and Brown in the Quindaro district of Kansas City, Kansas. Her 3-transfer bus trip took an hour and then some, so when she was ready to leave work at 5:00, her dad, concerned about the weather, came and picked her up and took her back to his house and basement shelter.

Meanwhile, dad and I headed down to the bait factory basement. From the cellar door on the south side of the house, we saw dozens, I repeat, dozens of spinning funnel clouds whirl across the dark green sky. The Everly Brothers, Elvis, and Pat Boone played on WHB Radio in between sparse and cryptic weather-related break-ins. Mom called home when she got to her dad's house, and that was the last we heard from her until she showed up at our front door around 9:00 p.m. The phone lines were jammed, and many were down.

Around dusk, An EF5 tornado - top wind speeds over 200 mph - first touched down near Williamsburg, Kansas and tracked for 71 miles until it finally lifted near Raytown, Missouri. It devastated the sleepy bedroom community of Hickman Mills and destroyed the small suburb of Ruskin Heights, Missouri. Forty-four people lost their lives that night and more than 500 were injured.

Weather warning were hit-and-miss back then. Two years before Ruskin Heights, in 1955, a tornado wiped out the small Kansas town of Udall, Killing eighty at one swipe.

Anyway, back in 1965, mom senses that the bait shop is part retail establishment, part anchor, and 100 percent not at all what she had in mind. (The influence of her mother is evident in all this. Pansy didn't think much of dad's bait business.) The lid is about to blow off of the pressure cooker. Stick around.