Quick take on Friday

Thank you to all those who have called or written. We made it okay through the storm last Friday, though not without much anxiety. I was stuck in downtown Nashville; L. and kids were at home. An F3 touched down about two radial miles from the apartment, and cut a 10-mile-long swath up to the West and further north, stopping in the town just north of us and killing 12 people. The stories are slowly starting to slip out: a sick woman stays home from work and falls asleep in her bed only to wake up later lying in her front yard with the remains of her house all around her; two children who were thrown into the twister as their home was ripped apart, taken up into the funnel and deposited, alive, in a field; a mother and her son cowering in a closet are sucked out and thrown 100 feet in different directions--she dies; a church with 40 pre-schoolers is hit head-on by the tornado, the sanctuary is demolished but the nursery is untouched, one of the children asks his teacher, "Are we going to heaven today?" Lynn-nore and I were pretty freaked, watching cell after cell come up from Arkansas, each one putting a tornado or two down; unfamiliar streets and counties constantly being cited on the radio: "A touchdown has been recorded in X-ner county"; "Residents north of Sullivan Farms need to take cover now"; "If you live south of Dixon, you should be aware of high winds in your area between 1:45 and 2:30 which could spawn a tornado," etc. The worst was that the highway connected Nashville with home was a parking lot. Thus, if I went home, I ran the risk of sitting trapped on the highway with cell after cell rushing overhead. I finally made a break for it about 6:30 and made it with no difficulties (a story in itself). I started to leave work earlier, at 2pm, but, while pumping gas, saw a dark, monstrous cloud come up over the horizon, like an upturned mountain of broiling black ashes hanging in mid-air. I went back to work, and learned later that there were three linked tornadoes in that cloud, none of which, thankfully, ever touched down.