Or maybe it had turned in another direction.īut no amount of fearful begging on my part would move my dad to open the door until he knew it was safe. I trembled and pleaded to go back outside. The atmosphere seemed oppressive and I began to imagine poisonous spiders creeping closer. And the beam from the flashlight my dad held cast strange shapes as it darted about the rows of shelves lined with dust-covered glass jars of home-canned fruits and vegetables. The damp, musty air felt thick and hard to breathe. Oddly, I was more afraid of being in that dark fruit cellar than the storm outside. “Sometimes His shadow may seem like a dark kind of shelter but it’s always the safest place you can be.” I could also hear my own heart beating and I clung to my mother, all my “big-girl wannabe” bravado gone. As he pulled the door down securely and latched it from the inside, we heard the muffled roar of swirling winds above. By that time, my dad had flung it open and was ready to help us down the steep steps into the dank, earthy darkness of the shelter. My heart pounded as we approached the familiar old corrugated-metal door lying almost flat against the mound of grass-covered earth. I was the youngest in our family and Mother took no chances as she scooped me up and ran toward safety. “Grab the girls!” my dad yelled as he dashed to yank open the door of our combination fruit cellar-storm shelter. Still, I didn’t like the looks of worry on their faces.Īs we watched with dread and fascination, a funnel dropped out of an ugly black cloud in the distance and headed our way. Daddy had never let harm come to us before. We’ll be okay, my child-thoughts reasoned. Standing on the back porch between my parents, I clutched the flowered apron my mother wore over her Donna-Reid-era housedress. I can still picture it clearly, though I was probably about five-years-old at the time.
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