Tornado Entry: 9

Happy Mothers Day Mom! For the record, my mother did not care much for Mother’s Day. She always said how it had turned into to a day for children to assuage their guilt. She used to say, “I’m in contact with my children, I know they love me. I don’t need them to send me candy once a year to prove it!”

When I was little and could save up the money, I always gave mom a Whitman’s Sampler box of chocolates bought at Sweet and Brophy Drug Store on Main Street. You would have thought I gave her the world. Mom related to me as an adult how she really did not care for those chocolates! No wonder she did not care when we kids ended up eating most of them!

Friends posted on their Facebook pages this link which is about the best I have seen showing how the storm progressed through my city. If you go to the first “P” to the right of 359 and go up 1 ½ inches you will hit my house. The only “P” on the left of 359 is Delphi Thermal, the factory I worked at 1998-2004.

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20110506/MULTIMEDIA/110509767/1291/NEWS#

My team member Mark sent me some of the pictures he took as we drove on Crescent Ridge Road Friday. I downloaded them to my Photobucket account here: http://s293.photobucket.com/albums/mm80/brick1101/Tuscaloosa%20Tornado%20Crescent%20Ridge%20Road/

I awoke this morning just as the kitchen clock was chiming four. Right on cue, a mockingbird started his song. I had slept through the entire night! What a wonderful feeling. Saturday was getting a weeks worth of paperwork/e-mail taken care of.

In the late afternoon I decided to get some groceries at Publix. After a nice hot shower, I put on a clean Utilikilt and headed off on foot through the neighborhoods.

They had cat food on sale 10 cans for $4.50. It never fails. I ended up with 20 cans of cat food, 5 pounds of potatoes, ½ gallon of milk, two little steaks, and a dozen eggs to fit into my backpack. It was heavy!

I cooked up smashed potatoes, and steak smothered in lots of onions for supper. After that feast I stretched out on the porch swing with Daggy on my lap. Stumpy made a pass by, annoyed that the “lap spot” was already taken! After witnessing total destruction, I now so appreciate the simple act of being able to relax on my front porch. My view is still the same. The ancient water oaks are standing tall and green, ready to shade my home from the brutal setting sun.

I took this picture at 7:45 Sunday morning to show the view from my porch swing when I recline back and stretch out. After working in the mist of the tornado destruction this is a paradise to me. It came so close to being ripped away from me.

This is the time of day I reflect on all that has happened. I so needed to be able to “recharge my batteries” from the relief work. I’ll be ready to go Monday. I was talking with Michelle and her crew who had been on the front lines for two days. Harpo related to me FEMA has stated the Tuscaloosa area has accomplished in about one week what took months for Katrina disaster. I can only give the highest credit to our Mayor and the volunteers.

If there is one good thing that came out of the depression, it was how it delayed the introduction of Television as an entertainment medium. Radio programmes such as Jack Benny, Burn’s and Allen, and Amos and Andy became an art form by the late 1930’s through the 1940’s. The writing was so tight and polished.

One New Years Eve show of Amos and Andy from December 1944 has been replaying in my head. (http://ia700209.us.archive.org/13/items/AmosandAndy1944/AA__441229__Jacksons_New_Years_Eve.mp3) A line I’m remembering concerns the saying of “If you cast your bread on the water and it will be returned tenfold.” Andy Brown says, “I done throwed some crumbs on the water and got back a bakery.” Now I realize how Andy felt…..