Twisters.

I lived on ground zero as they call it back in Hazel Green. Tornadoes used to come straight down my neighborhood and always seemed to head right for us when there was a storm. I remember one time a tornado came and Dad was out on the back porch and I remember saying, Dad! Come inside! And what was he doing? Lookin up at the sky. We did have a way to get underneath our house if worse came to worst, but we never did that. Instead, Mom threw me in the bathtub, not with water in it of course, and gave me some books to read while we waited for the storm to pass.
I admit, I was scared of storms and the wind for the longest time. You could always hear it whistle through the screens on the windows, through the fireplace, the doors would crack. But I learned how to tell when a storm was brewin from living there. When the leaves turn white on the trees, you know it's about to rain. And when the sky gets that nasty gray color with white tops on the clouds, you know it's gonna thunder and the wind will be comin. There was this radio pole or some kind of thing that had a red light flashing on it, I have no idea what it was for but it was way out there and I used to look at the lights and I would think the red light meant a bad storm was coming. Now the worst time for a storm to come is at night, especially tornadoes. You have no idea when they will strike, you can't see anything so what if you have a wall cloud, but you can't see it and it's right on you?
But for some strange reason, now I love storms. I love the excitement from thunder and lightning and the map on the news channels of the warnings and watches. The breaking live coverage of the Doppler Radar. Even though tornadoes are nothing to be excited about. I saw homes ripped apart and families homeless from these terrible storms. I went with my Dad when I was little to help clean up and I remember picking up something small and insignificant probably and asking the home owners if they wanted to keep it. Piles and piles of debris, rubble, shingles, parts of a house that was once beautiful were laying in this field, all remnants left over from this horrible tornado.
Now that I took you back into my memory, I think it's time I said goodnight.