For OS's readers from overseas, especially in Northern European sorts of climes, one fact should be mentioned at the outset: Tornadoes are just a fact of life for everyone who lives anywhere from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, and from Florida to the Chesapeake Basin. No stopping them or preventing them, although the art of predicting and tracking them has made great strides. The local TV broadcasters compete for viewers by installing and manning sophisticated equipment to predict and track individual storm cells in 3-D, with the ability to track the path down to the neighborhood level. It helps, and does save lives, but few structures built can withstand a direct hit by a storm traveling 60 mph while generating 150-mph winds. Houses, even brick houses, just disintegrate when struck. Large forests look as if a giant lawnmower has swept across, topping or toppling every tree. Trucks and cars are flipped like toys.
OS has lived through his share of them, even observed one form fifty yards behind his house and begin a march to the northeast that leveled a subdivision forty miles away. He watched the historic Louisville tornado of 1974 patiently grind its way through the oldest and best neighborhoods of the city, on an otherwise blue-sky day. Those parts of the city looked like they had suffered an air raid, and there is still a discernable path of newer houses and younger trees to this day.
All this to say--Friday's tornado was a close call, setting down in a friend's pasture about 1/2 mile to the north. Shingles lost off the roof was all that was suffered, but OS has a sense that this house's day may come, after 40 years of existence. Time to up insurance coverages, and have a Plan B in place.
And this to say as well, about America: Before the storm, OS's mobile phone lit up with friends calling to warn him, and afterward, more friends calling to check on him. This morning, OS visited a small church with a parishioner with family in Henryville, Indiana--which was flattened. Her son's house was destroyed. He called his mom to assure her that all her family were safe, and that 100 people had shown up unbidden at what used to be his house to assist in the cleanup and salvage. His message was, 'Don't send any more people in, we're overrun with help.'
It's all those values--church, family, community, frugality, industry, initiative--all those things the TrendyLeft ridicules and daily attempts to exterminate, that will rebuild places like Henryville, Indiana and New Liberty, Kentucky. Yes, government plays a role, especially by having an emergency response system in place, mainly run by the counties and the states. But these dumb beer-drinkin', football-lovin', gun-ownin', church-goin' rednecks are the ones who climb into their pickups (loaded down with chainsaws, bobcats, power tools, generators, winches, water, ice chests, food and beer) and hightail it toward the Henryvilles of this country.
They ain't glamorous, they ain't pretty, they talk and act funny. But they keep things quietly glued together. OS hopes he's been able to share a bit about them with his friends overseas, and hopes the PowersThatBe in this country will cease making war on them.
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