scary

Yesterday at 4:30 a.m. the tornado siren went off. The night before, NewsCenter 7's smart and charming meteorologist from Charlotte, NC, reported that tornadic conditions were heading toward the area and would reach the Miami Valley around 5:00 a.m. We awakened with the sirens, went to the living room to check the TV weather watch, and yes, it was very windy and raining hard. There were tornadoes around us but they passed quickly with none touching down. A few miles east of us, some neighborhoods and Wright-Patterson AFB sustained some damage. Always too close for comfort.

Back in 1974, a tornado ripped through Xenia, OH, a small town about twelve miles east, and caused major destruction. At that time, my dad was the manager of the Sears Downtown Dayton store and the Xenia satellite store was part of his territory. He was able to get into Xenia to survey the damage to the store and he came home shell-shocked. He could not believe the devastation. The day that the tornado passed through the area, the sky was filled with eerie gray-green-black clouds and my siblings and I stood by the picture window in the dining room watching them pass until Mom yelled at us to get to the basement.

A basement. We do not have a basement in our house. This is the first house I've lived in without a basement. Those tornado sirens were a wake-up moment (literally and figuratively) to realize that our tornado "safe spot" is an interior bathroom. But when the sirens went off, I followed a friend's advice: put your tennis shoes on. You want to have shoes on to protect your feet in case of damage to property. The things you think of in a crisis situation.