Like all my peers, I possess a personal collection of storm stories. Thank God few of us will have to embrace such fearful images as folks in Sulfur and Barnsdall will have to carry from the past weeks. Homes and livelihoods destroyed; personal belongings scattered over the landscape. Irreplaceable family heirlooms sprinkled about like confetti.
One year, Billie and I were returning to Tulsa from Memorial Day celebrations in Stigler and Sallisaw. In the 1970s, weather forecasting was not what it is today. Don Woods drew Gusty.
When we left Stigler, though hot and humid, the sky was clear. Weather my Grandmother Lane referred to as “weather-brewing weather.” I had given foul weather no consideration.
We passed through Muskogee, and for a moment, considered driving through Honor Heights, but didn’t.
When I turned off 69 and onto the Turnpike, as I headed NW I caught my first glimpse of an ominous cloud.
Just as our coins were clinking into the bucket at the Coweta exit, large drops of rain started to fall.
The wind picked up. The sky darkened. Oncoming cars had their headlights on. The rain intensified. We saw some cars pulled over, taking shelter beneath the underpasses. We didn’t yet know that this was not a good idea.
“Dang Billie, look at those garbage cans blowing!” My wife looked. They bounced across the highway in front of us. We agreed so many garbage cans must have blown from a home and garden center we knew to be close.
I would later learn I was wrong. The garbage cans were siding that had been peeled off of homes in a nearby trailer park.
Just when I thought it couldn’t rain any harder, it did. The wind blew our car sideways. I sought shelter. I saw a convenience store. I made a left toward its parking lot.
Did you know that on a dark and stormy night roads and running water look alike? I didn’t, but I soon found out they did. I felt my car drift, then float and then sink. I saw a car, mid-door deep in water, just ahead of me.
We exited the car away from the current. I saw two men waiting at the water’s edge prepared to help should we stumble. Walking in the rapidly moving water was not easy.
Now, standing beneath the store’s awning, I found I wasn’t the first or the second driver in the rushing water. I was the third and I wasn’t the last.
A lady leaving a prayer meeting at her neighborhood church would be next. The flashing taillights of a stranded car hadn’t deterred her.
Attired in a long dark dress and her hair raised in a bun, the lady emerged from her car. She reached back and pulled her necessities from the vehicle.
She stepped into the torrent, mid-thigh deep in the water, an umbrella over her head and a Bible clutched to her heart. With a young man on each side of her, but not allowed to assist her, out she came. Only Norman Rockwell could have suitably and tangibly preserved this image.
I retain an indelible vision.
“I’m a big follower and reactor to weather.” – Jimmy Buffett
