A TORNADO

Last year, July 12^th, the storms that ravaged Nisswa, and the Gull Lake area, spared my home from damage, but they made my mind flash back to 1965—the first year I was on the Fire Department—and the deadly tornados that tore through Fridley and Spring Lake Park. It was May 6^th of 1965 and last year was the fiftieth anniversary of those storms. I was 24 years old, and not only just a rookie on the department, but an impressionable one at that.

There is s saying, “The calm before the storm.” It’s a calm that is filled with fear and trepidation, of not knowing what’s coming. But there is a “calm after the storm too” and it’s one filled with shock and disbelief, of what just took place. Often there is a feeling of hopelessness, confusion and not knowing, what to do next, except to be thankful you survived. When you are called to help and you look out over an entire neighborhood, absolutely flattened by the winds, and see people walking aimlessly on the debris-filled streets because they don’t know where to go, or what to do next, it’s heart wrenching. Your training tells you one thing, your heart tells you another. Even though you came to help, you’re not sure just what to do. You see an old lady sitting on her cement steps with just a basement hole behind her, where her house once stood. Her eyes fixed and wide open and her face expressionless, deep in shock, holding all she has left. Her cat. I wanted to go to her but you can’t because you’re too busy. You hear the gas lines still hissing, and somewhere in the rubble, a phone is ringing. You hear a scream and uncontrollable sobbing, and you know they found another victim. Before the night was over a second tornado would come through—an hour after the first one. There were 5 or 6 tornados in all, with thirteen fatalities and hundreds who were injured.

I went home late that night, not knowing what I would find—there were no cell phones in those days. My brand new home, on the other side of the river, was only on the outskirts of the storm but it had no siding left on it. It had been stripped by the wind, and there were very few shingles left on the roof. The hail had wrecked my car. My wife was sitting in the kitchen with the kids in the dark, scared and with tears in her eyes. One of the things about being called out in storms is, you often have to abandon your own family. I told her, “Dry those tears, everything will be fixed. I wish,” I said, “I could accurately convey to you what I saw and heard this night. We are the lucky ones, honey, believe me.” Over the next thirty years on the Department there would be many more storms and disasters, but nothing like that night. After that, when we would get called to help at storms, my thoughts would always go back to that May 6th night in Fridley.

We have come a long way since then. Sunday night the 12^th, I tracked the storms on my phone. The media and the sirens gave us plenty of warning, and I knew we weren’t directly in its path. I prayed that those who were would be safe. It turned out that no one was hurt, and that is what counts. The people of Fridley, back then, were a resilient people. They rebuilt their homes, patched up their wounded, and sadly, buried their dead. A year later you would never know what happened to them that night. Not unless you were in the storm or were called to help.

IT''S SUMMER

                                                          

So today is the day we all live for, June 1^st and although not the official start of summer it seems to be the day when we all start celebrating summer. May is always a fickle time as when Frost wrote, “The wind blows cold, when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade.” But June is the hump month; when at least in the Central Minnesota lake country, the tomatoes plants can finally go in the ground. The boat yards, where thousands of blue covered pontoons and boats sat out the winter are now mostly empty and the crafts are back in the lake where they belong. Docks with squeaky wheels got pushed out into the depths and fishing boats now putt along the shorelines trolling for the big one. Patio doors are opened and houses are being aired out. In a week or so school will be out and children’s voices, hard at play, will ring across the lake.

Noisy honkers paddle along the shore with goslings bobbing behind them looking for a lucrative lawn to gobble on. Fawns on wobbly legs scamper to keep up with mom and cautious motorists watch, not only for the does crossing the roads but what is behind them. Babies of every size and shape our coming out of nests and burrows. Alfred Tennyson wrote in his poem Locksley Hall and I quote, “In the spring a young mans fancy lightly turns to thought’s of love.” I maintain it goes way beyond those young men, if the birds, fish, and critters out here are any example of love and courtship.

I still love summer so much, even though I am in the autumn of my life and not as active anymore. As I write today, outside of my office window humming birds dart in and out of the feeder. If man could build a plane, that flew like they do, we would rule the skies. A Robin sits on a fence post a few feet away, half of an earthworm hanging out of her mouth. She built her nest over my back door so she gets interrupted a lot as I come and go but she has successfully hatched a brood and now she has to feed them. Their little bills point skyward waiting for a morsel.

By the time this gets printed June will be mostly over and it will all be old news. As much as June is so repetitive each year it never stops amazing me. There was a time in my life when the rigors of everyday life overshadowed anything Mother Nature had to offer me but old age and retirement now bring it all front and center. I look to Hemingway for a proper explanation of it all. He wrote, “When spring came, even the false spring there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” I have stood and looked into the office window of where Earnest Hemmingway wrote. It is a secluded room over a garage behind the house in Key West and now I know why.

There will be June days long after we are all gone and even if people are successful at destroying all Mother Nature brings to us, she will fix it again and it will live on.

TO THE GRADUATES

So its graduation time again and thousands of young people will take the next step on their trip into adulthood. For some it will be more education, probably something specifically tailored to their life ambitions. For others it will be time to go to work and make their own way in life, free to pursue their dreams. For many, they don’t know what those dreams are yet but they are willing to search for one, instead of waiting for it to come to them and they will make a more educated decision later. For a few, sadly, they will spend a few years living in their parents basement, playing video games and drifting around, until they realize that life will go on without them, if they don’t want to be part of the process.

Knowing what I know now, most of what you learned in school was just the basics, including learning how to learn. It was a preparation time and now comes the curriculum that makes every day a learning day for the rest of your life. So much of our education comes from examples. Choices to make based on someone else’s past experiences. A cheap, but very good education if you pay attention. You see there are as many bad choices in life to make as good ones. Maybe even more. Great things will come to those who pay attention.

Our country greatly needs leaders who are willing to step up to the plate and make good choices. If you search the annals of history you will find good examples of people who filled those roles. If you look at Washington right now you will find a lot of those bad examples I talked about.  I guess it’s up to you to try and change the course of this country and not waste the lessons of those good choices.

One of the things I’ve learned about life is that when choices are to be made, there are always two sides. Getting on what you believe to be the right side of things can be unpopular sometimes but all you can do is try to educate people as to why you think your way is better and tell the truth. Then if your way is not the accepted way, you have to yield graciously to what was chosen by the masses and make the best of it. In life, as in sports there are winners and losers. Being a good winner is paramount only to being a good loser also. At the end of the civil war General Ulysses Grant said to the Confederate troops and I paraphrase, “Go home to your loved ones and lets quit this foolishness. It’s a time to heal.” This was the mark of a great leader filled with compassion for his fellow men that were once his enemy.

Society has evolved to a point where human lives, human suffering have lost much of the true meaning of what they should have represented to us. We give a lot of attention to our heroes who died in foreign conflicts to keep our country free. We owe it to them to take up their crosses and preserve what they fought so hard for. Growing up in a poor family from the wrong side of the tracks my father told me, “Remember that you’re just as good as everybody else--- but not one damn bit better. “ That goes for all of you that are going out into the world today. I wish you peace, happiness, and success-- but mostly always-- love for one another.