A Good Day is Any Day That You’re Alive

I guess there was something big I forgot to mention that occurred during my two-year absence from the Web, something I remembered Sunday afternoon that I hadn’t written about here, remembered yesterday while I was sitting in the front room of an O’Charley’s on the south side of Montgomery, Alabama, watching hail beat down on the cars and pavement outside and listening to someone talk about a tornado that had allegedly touched down 7 miles east of there, well…

Almost two years ago in May 2003, I was driving home from my mother’s and back to Memphis. We were in the process of moving her into a new home she had just bought and this was what wound up being the third of four almost consecutive weekends I had gone up there to help move more stuff. As I usually do when I’m up there, I left much later than I probably should have, mainly because we had been sitting on her new front porch watching a storm pour down rain and go by.

Driving back to Memphis on I-40, as I got closer to Jackson I seemed to be having more difficulty keeping the car on the road for all the wind, and I noticed the lightning ahead seemed to be getting worse and worse. I called my mother on my cell phone and asked what they were saying on TV about the weather. At the time, Madison County, which I was coming into right about then, was just under a “severe thunderstorm warning”. I debated about pulling over then, but then decided to move onward, figuring if it got really bad I could just stop in Jackson and get a hotel room for the night and be done with it. Coming into Jackson, as I got to the new Campbell Street exit, I thought about pulling over again but decided not to. As I got into Jackson the wind was so bad and pushing at my car, I decided that was it, I was getting off on the next exit, which was the Hwy. 45 Bypass exit.

As I pulled off onto the exit, here came the hail. Giant, bigger than golf-ball size hail, in torrents. How I drove on up several more yards through it, I have no idea. Within seconds, there was like this huge river of humongous hail on the road.

I edged on up, scared to death ‘cos I couldn’t see if anyone was in front of me or behind me, but managed to get where I thought was on the shoulder – for those of you who know the area, I was right off the exit onto the shoulder of the bypass and past a concrete guardrail (should have probably stopped there) and could see the Vann Road exit sign (to Super Wal-Mart et al) directly ahead, tho barely. And hoping like heck no one would come up from behind and ram right into the back of my car, not being able to see me with all that stuff coming down.

The hail just kept coming and that was when I noticed the tiny cracks in my windshield. Soon they were bigger and bigger, and at that point I was so mesmerized in horror at the cracks I was barely paying attention to how loud the pounding was on the roof and hood of my car. I just kept watching in horror as more and more cracks appeared. The wind was hammering at my car, not moving it but it was somewhat shaking from side to side in place. There are several large shopping centers, the Super Wal-Mart and a car dealership directly ahead and to the right of where I was, as well as many other businesses, and lights were flashing all around as transformers blew, electric signs exploded, all kinds of stuff going on all around me. I never did really see anything flying through the air other than the hail – it was all just one great big gray blanket or sheet dotted with that huge hail, all coming straight at my car.

As I kept watching the windshield crack over and over again, now so cracked that the whole thing was pretty much one giant spidery crack with lots and lots of legs, it finally occurred to me that I’d better cover my head or something, and remembered I had the lids of two of those giant Rubbermaid tubs in the back seat, so I grabbed them and kind of hid under them, praying the whole time the windshield wouldn’t completely shatter, or worse. About that same time it occurred to me that I had put the car in park just past the concrete rail, and that there was probably a dropoff of some kind on the other, passenger side of the car, as I was up fairly high, possibly one of the highest elevations in northern Madison County.

Two important things about this experience. I have grown up where tornadoes and straight-line winds are commonplace in the spring and, in recent years, in November and December. Let me tell you, first, that all those things you hear your whole life about what to do if a tornado strikes, if you’re somewhere with no real warning – say, in your car driving down the road – all those things they told you about getting into a ditch or some other low place and such doesn’t do you a bit of good because when it hits like that, you don’t have time to do anything. At the point when I realized that something was truly and definitely wrong, within a second or two that river of humongous hail was coming down. For one thing, I don’t think I could have gotten the car door open to get out against the wind. And second, if I could have gotten out of the car, I think that gigantic hail would have beaten me mightily if not to death.

The other thing is, when it finally occurs to you that you just might not make it out of this – well, there’s nothing you can do. That’s pretty much it. I mean, yeah, I prayed I guess, I thought about some people and some things, all that kind of stuff. But as far as actually being able to do something, you’re pretty much completely helpless like that against Mother Nature. I mean, really, when the horrible realization dawned on me, it was just like, “Well, this might be it”. And that was that. Not another thing I could do.

I know it was probably only minutes, but time really did stop and the thing seemed to go on forever. When the car finally stopped shaking so much and the sound of the hail beating up my car got less and less frequent, I peeked out from under the Rubbermaid lids to find the windshield pretty much completely cracked, but intact still, not shattered. I sat there for a while trying to gather my composure again, called my mother on the cell phone and, very oddly calmly, told her what had just happened… collected myself again and decided to try to drive up to a convenience store I knew was just up the road a little ways.

As I pulled in the parking lot, I saw the person standing outside the store take in the appearance of my car and mouthed “oh my god”… several people had gathered there by now, including a Madison County sheriff’s deputy who had lost communication with the sheriff’s and city police department (the law enforcement transmitter downtown had gotten blown out in the storm as well)… everybody there pretty much looked completely shellshocked. More people kept congregating looking shellshocked. I sat down at a table, called my mother back and Kelli (who lived just up the road and wanted me to come stay with her, but as I told her the storm had passed and I was going to try to make it back to Memphis if I could). As bad freaked out as I was, I kept learning how lucky I was, especially when the married couple who were working at the store that night got a call from home near Lexington, 15-20 miles up the road, telling them that they had lost everything – their home, a shop, a barn on their property.

I finally got myself together enough to start heading back, slowly, towards Memphis. Even though the windshield was cracked all over there was a small spot in front of my eye line, so I could see well enough to drive tho it was a little tricky.

I pulled onto the interstate only to find that, just south of the exit, trees had fallen and were completely covering the entire shoulder of the road and much of the right-hand lane of the interstate for a couple of miles. This is probably where I would have pulled over had I not pulled off the exit. Scary.

And really no less scary in the coming weeks although after I spent the day off work and trying to compose myself back to normal and get over the jitters and freaked-outness, once I’d finally gotten home about 5 in the morning (when I should have been home around midnight), I was mostly back to normal. But the next weekend Andra & I went back up to Mom’s for the final bout of moving, and as we passed through where I had been driving on the other, westbound side of the interstate the weekend before, I saw all the decimated trees and signs twisted and pulled over and all kinds of damage up and down that side of the interstate… so if I’d pulled over and stopped before I did, too, who’s to say whether it would have been better or worse. Even worse, a few weeks after that I was headed that way again and decided to pull off the interstate real quick and check out the spot where I had parked, to see just what was on the other side of the car at the time… and the dropoff was much greater than I had thought. Maybe not enough to kill me, but surely had the winds pushed my little car over the side I’d not have gotten out of that unscathed.

But as it was, I did get out of the whole thing unscathed, physically anyway. My car, on the other hand, was another story – it wound up totaled, unfortunately, tho I kept it and did some minor repair (like replacing the windshield) and am driving it still today, hail dents all over and all. I was planning to get it repainted and see about getting at least some of the dents out, but to date have not done so.

Sure, I have been frightened at various times in my life… but not like this. That was most assuredly the single most frightening few minutes of my life. I really did think for what must have been several minutes but seemed like an hour at the time, as the tornado went on and on and on and didn’t seem like it was going to stop anytime soon, that I wasn’t going to get out of that alive, probably. Since then to this day I still carry with me a feeling like I am not really supposed to be here. It’s an odd thing to live with, very odd.

And tho when I’m home and the tornado sirens go off (there’s one just blocks away from my house at the fairgrounds so it gets very loud here) and especially if hail starts falling, I get pretty nervous… yesterday I wasn’t nervous at all, sitting in that restaurant on the south side of Montgomery watching the hail fall out the window (which I was sitting near but ready to move at any second) and listening to the sirens wail. I guess I figure I’ve already beaten the monster. Hope it’s the one and only time, anyway, ‘cos it is truly a game of chance, that… and I don’t really wish to bet on what the chances are of getting out of that unscathed a second time. Good night & be safe & most importantly – be happy.