Thursday, January 10, 2019

WHEN DAD FOUGHT THE CLIMATE WAR

We left our house in Fort Sill after my dad graduated from the advanced artillery school there and we moved to Carlisle where my mother's parents lived and we lived in a tiny row house my dad bought  for us to live in while he fought in Vietnam and then he came home and we moved to Leavenworth where he went to the Command and General Staff school with nobodies like Colin Powell and where we (me, my sister and my little brother) would gather at the top of the basement stairs to look up at dad standing in the back door of our house standing there with one leg kicked up against the door with a beer in his hand watching for tornadoes when the tornado sirens sounded.

Those F****sticks in New England, New York, California don't have any idea. Saw this on timewaster tonight. It brought back some memories.


I went to an Amish dinner a couple years ago and they serve amazing dinners that are for us that live and are not Amish. It was, as usual, a wonderful dinner. I'm almost garrulous and was blathering. Every single one of the 3 families sitting across and to my left said, "wait" "You lived in Leavenworth, where?" 401 Spruce St and they turned out to be my neighbors. The world is much smaller than you think.

6 comments:

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John in Philly said...

A few months back my wife and I were waiting to be seated for breakfast at Shades of Green when I started chatting with the couple in front of us. They were from the Pittsburgh area and when I mentioned we were from Philly they said their son worked in the Philly airport. A few seconds later we found I worked with their son.
A very small world.

OldAFSarge said...

Re: "with a beer in his hand watching for tornadoes"

Been there, done that. Omaha back in the late '80s, early '90s. Nothing is quite as scary as a tornado. My next door neighbor and I were staning in our shared driveway, having a beer, listening to the sirens and watching the sky. When we spotted a funnel cloud dropping down from a cloud to the southeast, we went back to our "shelters," a ground floor closet next to the bathroom underneath the stairs.

Anonymous said...

In Tennessee we don't stand in the door, we go onto the porch & have a seat; drinks are a given when there's a tornado warning.
Of course, if the tornado is going to take the trailer, it doesn't really matter where you are. The porch is just a convenient spot (also, if the tin roof starts rolling up, it's a signal to run). DAMHIK.
--Tennessee Budd

HMS Defiant said...

In both Leavenworth and Fort Riley we had serious basemements. Fort Sill, nadda. My sister and I told me dad we'd climb in the dishwasher to be safe. Huntsville was the only place that I actually saw the funnel clouds drop out of the clouds and rain. My dad and I were sailing my laser on the inland waterway at Fort Myer Florida when 3 waterspouts came ashore. We had that boat planing all the way back to the centerboard. It was awesome!

HMS Defiant said...

Here in metroparkcentralis Shaker Heights version it appears that the founders really had a hate on for porches. There's only 2 in the whole neighborhood. It's funny. I saw an elderly gentlemen sitting on his porch about 5 houses down from mine and so I went up and chatted with him. Retired Army, Vetenarian, son of army vetenarian. We spent about 4 hours one evening just chatting on his porch. His wife finally came out to chase me off. He was a good guy. She turned out to be nice too.
My sister woke us up a few months ago to report that most of a tree had fallen off one of ours and was now laying in our yard and on the neighbors roof. She thought we ought to know. I felt bad sort of when I woke the neighbors to tell them our tree fell on their house.
I'm always amazed when people I see walking hear a real calamity noise and just freeze. They don't even look up to see what's falling on them.