Tornadoes and the Crying Lady at the Library

The other day, on my way into the Fremont library, I passed a woman who was in the vestibule, on her cell phone, sobbing. That’s usually a fairly awkward thing to encounter.  Do you say something? Do you see if they need help?  What do you do?  All I heard as I passed her was a fragment of conversation – “No… they said they couldn’t help me.  I don’t know what I’m going to do…”

“Uh, oh…” I thought.  She had probably been to TrueNorth and for whatever reason, didn’t qualify for services, or we were out of funding or something… and since I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the situation, nor did I have the knowledge of the current state of most of our funding, I decided to keep my nose out of it. When I came back out a few minutes later – she was gone.  I’ve mentioned before that, thankfully, I’ve not yet had to access the services of an agency like ours, but this encounter got me thinking about how I would react in similar circumstances.  How would I react in an emergency?  If history is any indication – probably not very well…

A few weeks back we had a very large storm pass through our area.  It was severe thunderstorms with lots of lighting and something called straight-line winds, which I’ll talk more about in a little bit. As I drove to work that morning, completely oblivious to what I was driving into, I noticed that the sky in front of me (to the west) looked, well… sick.  Like… green and black and nasty. There was a LOT of lighting going on, but no rain… yet.  As I drove west on 112^th, and got about to the Chinook Campground, very large raindrops started to splotch on my windshield, and by the time I got to the stop sign at 112^th and Warner, maybe 200 yards further – the deluge had started.  In the span of about 2 seconds, (and I mean that literally) things went from bad to really, really scary.  As I sat there in my car at the stop sign, looking out the front window, the rain suddenly started falling sideways.  Huge, never-ending sheets of water moving horizontally.  The car began to shake in the wind, and then suddenly it moved about 4 inches to the left. I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of the car, but I knew it had to be a tornado.  “I have to get to a basement”, is all I could think as I threw my little Civic Hybrid into reverse and did a Rockford-Files-style spin around, and raced back toward my home, now about 5 miles away.

I raced east on 112^th (well…“raced” is not entirely accurate, since I could barely see anything, I don’t think I got past 40 or 45 MPH) completely convinced there was a tornado somewhere very close that I just couldn’t quite see. “God – just let me get home, just let me get home…”  Suddenly out of the darkness in front of me I saw a huge black shape looming, coming from my left down across the road.  “It’s a tree, coming down right in front of me!”  I slammed on the brakes, only to see the shape snap back upright.  Back on the accelerator and back to praying.  Another mile down the road, and it happened again - a large black shape looming, coming from my left down across the road in front of me.  Again, I leaned on the brakes, only to see it snap back upright.  I was really starting to get scared now and the adrenalin was pumping.  I turned left (north) onto Bagley and now had to drive about a mile totally exposed through open fields with the wind hitting me on the left side, without anything slowing it down.  I was fighting hard to keep the car on the road, and fully expected the twister to appear out of the cornfield on my left and sweep me away to Oz.  “I have to get to a basement!” 

As I approached the wooded section of the road, just before it intersects with 104th, I hunkered down in my seat, as if making myself smaller in the car might protect me.  Suddenly – all I could see in front of me was a large, irregularly shaped dark blob, and for the third time in about as many minutes I slammed on my brakes.  This time there was a huge tree that had already fallen across the road and I skidded to a stop with the front of my car just hitting the branches.  I think I said something unprintable just then, and glanced out my window to my left to see a raging electrical fire burning just off the road.  I mean raging!  Electrical fires look weird anyway – but to see one in a complete downpour, about 10 feet from my car, which was now blocked, while a tornado was ripping the world apart around me, was all it took to send me over the edge into complete panic.

I threw the car into reverse again and did another spin-around turn.  I fumbled to get my cell phone open and called home with shaking hands telling my wife to “Get in the basement!  Get in the basement!”  I then dropped the phone (since I was shaking so badly) and raced to go the long way around to get to my house, dodging all the debris that was now littered all over the roads.  Downed trees and large limbs partially blocking the road.  Garbage cans.  A dog house.  Was that a port-a-john?  I finally got home, and miraculously, we still had power.  I parked the car in the garage and raced to join my wife in the basement.  She was calmly watching the news reports detailing the severe thunderstorms and straight-line winds that had just raced through the area.  “Straight-line winds are common with the gust-front of a thunderstorm or originate with a downburst from a thunderstorm. These events can cause considerable damage, even in the absence of a tornado. The reason these storms are so dangerous is because of the consistent wind that does not let up. The winds can reach 80 m.p.h. or more and can last for periods of twenty minutes or longer.” (Thanks Wikipedia!).  No tornado.  I had panicked and done the absolute wrong thing, every step of the way.

The winds of theses storms are strongest at the leading edge and this particular storm had produced winds that were up over 80 MPH, and the storm itself was moving in basically a west to east direction at approx. 60 MPH.  So, when I turned around and drove home to get to my basement – I basically kept myself right in the most dangerous part of the storm for about 10 minutes, or about how long it took for the worst of it to move past. I honestly thought I’d be calm, cool, and collected in an emergency, and usually I do pretty well, but not this time.  How would I react if a different kind of “storm” hit my family?  What if I suddenly couldn’t pay by the gas or electric bill and winter was raging?  What if our house was in foreclosure?  How would I react then?  How would you? 

Later in the day, I saw the woman from the library at TrueNorth.  Turns out, she had been to another service provider earlier in the day, and sure enough – their funding for the specific kind of assistance she needed had run out, and luckily, we still had enough to help.  She had collected herself, and found a place to get help, and I for one, was very glad to see that she had weathered that storm. 

And that’s what happened in a day in the life of TrueNorth.   

101 Reasons

A woman came into TrueNorth the other day needing to access our Food Pantry. It seems that for the first time in her life, she simply couldn’t make ends meet and there just wasn’t enough to eat. Sadly, there is nothing “special” about this story… quite frankly, it happens all day long, pretty much every day we’re open.  Nope, nothing out of the ordinary, save one small fact.  She was 101 years old. 

I have no idea if anyone reading this has ever “lived in poverty”, or not had enough to eat. I know my family struggled a bit when I was a little kid. I grew up in a tiny little rural community in western New York called West Falls, and I went to elementary school with a lot of kids who got free lunches. I mean - A LOT. I only got free milk, and not really getting the concept, felt like I was getting ripped off. I remember eating a lot of casseroles at our house, but I also remember eating at friend’s houses where they had Hamburger Helper, without the hamburger. When you’re little, you typically don’t really understand what it means to struggle, financially. I had relatives who lived in Buffalo that were really quite poor, but I figured they were lucky ‘cause they got free cheese from the government. Free cheese!  

By the time I got to middle school, we had moved to Michigan and my dad was a big-wig making decent money. I spent the next 15 years living among the “haves” in Oakland County, and kind of forgot about the “have-nots”. When I got married in 1994 and moved to Grant, where my wife is a teacher – I was reminded. She would tell me about her students, and I’d even meet some of them, and they reminded me of the kids I went to school with back in West Falls. When I started work at TrueNorth in 1999 (then NCCS), every day I would see the people who had genuine needs come through our door, and... well... I don’t need to be reminded anymore.

I’m grateful today that both my wife and I have jobs that we love. I’m grateful we have health care. I’m grateful that my folks are still around and in relatively good health, for people in their upper 70’s. I’m grateful my sister is still alive (another story for another day). I’m grateful that I get to live where I do. I’m grateful that I haven’t (yet) had need of a food pantry like the one at TrueNorth, but I’m even more grateful that ours was stocked and we were able to help a 101 year-old woman who needed it, for the first time in her life. Today I have 101 reasons to be grateful.

And that’s what’s going on in a day in the life of TrueNorth.