Right Wing Nut House

On Saturday night at 8:52 PM local time, a tornado ripped through my hometown of Streator Illinois, touching down just a couple of hundred yards from my house.

My PJ Media article today is about my brush with nature unbound:

The twister tore through the southern part of town, wreaking a path of destruction 400 yards wide. It didn’t sound like a freight train - the usual description you read in the newspapers. Freight trains don’t roar like a wild beast and beat holy hell against your windows seeking to get in. The rattling, clacking, and shaking of my brick house was augmented by the rending, tearing sounds of tree limbs snapping, the popping of transformers (sounding just like old-fashioned flash bulbs exploding), and a strange, terrifying high-pitched whine that made it sound as if all the furies in the world had been unleashed and were circling my home in anticipation of its destruction.

Then, a huge cracking sound and a thump. Half our elm tree in the backyard had split and fallen lengthwise across the lawn, brushing against the sliding doors in the dining room. Another couple of feet and it would have crashed through. Then there was another tremendous ripping noise followed by a crash as a section of our fence tore away and smashed into the AC unit.

Where was I when this occurred? I was standing at the top of the stairs to the basement in the kitchen with legs so weak that I knew if I tried to go downstairs, I would have fallen and broken my neck. So I stood there, not two feet from our large kitchen window, too terrified to move to safety, mesmerized by the scene outside that was now being lit up constantly by lightning. The trees were bending to near 45 degree angles. The small twigs and branches that were banging into the window were competing with the constant, driving, sideways rain that was almost as loud as the wind.

Most people who die in tornadoes are hit by debris from their own house. It was monumentally stupid to stand next to a window with the wind blowing near 100 miles per hour, but clear thinking is not possible when witnessing nature unbound. In retrospect, it has made me appreciate the ancients a little more who worshiped the power of the natural world, named weather events for gods, and though superstitious to a fault, had a healthier respect for what nature could do than I (and probably many people living today).

I am getting it in the comments from people who say I acted like a coward, that I should “grow a pair,” that I am “childish.” Well, OK. I will gladly give you the three minutes I lived through when that tornado was roaring through the neighborhood. I am sure that these big, brave he-men would spit in the twister’s eye while waddling down stairs to the basement trying to keep their huge balls from scraping the steps.

The truth is, we have an unfinished basement with no banister on the stairway so that even when there is no emergency, going down the steps is an adventure. I would have made my way downstairs earlier except trying to corral three terrorized cats proved to be a difficult proposition. By the time they were all downstairs, the National Weather Service was telling people to take cover immediately so I grabbed my laptop, my carton of cigs, and my wallet. Just when I turned to go, the power went down, the wind came up, and terror took over.

I daresay that anyone - especially those critics in the comments who are poster children for why I don’t allow comments on this site anymore - would have felt exactly as I did.

I feel kind of ridiculous explaining myself but a record had to be made somewhere. I couldn’t include all of this in the article - it would have been way too long and detracted from the narrative.

Regardless, I have to give props to Com Ed who restored power in about 36 hours - power came on 5 minutes before the Hawks game on Sunday night. I understand that even now, there are hundreds of homes and businesses without electricity so I feel pretty lucky.

Two years ago it was the flood in Algonquin. Now a tornado. God seems to be going down the list of natural threats he can throw against me so I guess earthquakes might be next.

They’ve been expecting the Big One along the New Madrid fault for a while. That will probably be my next travail. Better lay in supplies because the way Obama handles disasters, it might be a year before I see any help.