THE TORNADO

THE TORNADO

While living on Stella Street we were all sitting around listening to the weather report on the radio because there were storms in the area. It was December 18, 1957. We heard on the radio there was a tornado in Mt. Vernon. We immediately became concerned because that's where Mom's sister, Bernice Muzzarelli, her husband, Andy, and her son, Johnny (called Jeff since he was drafted into the service) lived. We listened further to a list of those injured and sure enough Bernice's name came over the radio. I don't believe she was hurt, though. Nevertheless it scared us and what else scared us was that it might be coming our way. 

We didn't have a basement so we made a mad dash for Aunt Ginny's house a block north on Cleveland. We passed by the side of Grandpa's store and the best I remember there was a power line down. Dad warned us to walk around it so we did. The wind was whipping horizontally. We lightweight ones could barely walk into it. We had no umbrellas. They wouldn't have done any good anyway. So when we got to Ginny's, we were soaked to the bone. She took us down to her basement and brought us towels. I don't believe we were there very long. 

We were still worried about Bernice. She and Johnny and some of the neighbors had hidden under furniture and were uninjured. The home of the neighbors who came to Bernice's house for refuge was untouched by the tornado. It was one of those tornadoes that hopped. Bernice's next door neighbor was outside when the tornado hit and so she grabbed ahold of a tree and tried to hold onto her 4-year-old son at the same time but couldn't hold on and he was carried away by the tornado and killed. He was the only death caused by the tornado. His dad was a high school teacher.

We went to where the house used to be the next day and there was only rubble -- everywhere. It was shocking. I remember just standing there and staring at the devastation. There used to be a drive-in movie theater not far from the back of the Muzzarelli house. It was gone. We used to stand close to the road where we could see it from in front of the house. We couldn't hear a thing but it still fascinated us. We never watched a whole movie, though. We got bored before long. The best I remember it was between where K-Mart and the Rec Club are now. They never rebuilt it. Bernice and Andy did have their house rebuilt and Bernice insisted on an outdoor cellar.

The houses in that subdivision were all built after WW2 when there was an extreme housing shortage because of the millions of soldiers returning to the states and because few houses were built during the depression and during the war. Those similar subdivisions were springing up all over the states. They were what we call "cookie cutter houses" today. They all looked very similar if not just alike. They weren't as sturdy as houses that were already built, partly because they were built in a hurry out of necessity so they were vulnerable to tornadoes. Most people who lost their homes had them rebuilt and they are still there today (2020).