No, not the tornadoes, but the way people get out and help their neighbors.

Here’s the caption on this picture, from the St. Louis Post Dispatch (Mascoutah, btw, is a small town in Illinois about an hour or so east of St. Louis)

JUNE 8, 2009 — Rodger Harris (right) is hugged by his sister, Lynnda Pruett, outside his home in Mascoutah after a suspected tornado ripped through the area on Monday. The winds from the storm blew over numerous trees on his property; one fell on this home, crashing through the roof and side of the house. Another tree crushed his pickup. No one was hurt during the storm. Harris has a large family in the area, and relatives quickly showed up to help with the cleanup. (David Carson /P-D)

I happen to be visiting the Belleville area and the tornado sirens went off twice. It didn’t get bad, but I did see the rotation in a cloud just to the east of us, which turned into one of a couple of tornadoes. Tornadoes suck balls, and I resent the hell out of the storm chasers (including Japanese tourists) who just chase them for fun and scream and laugh as if it’s a carnival ride as they film. These show up on You Tube, and I’d like to punch these people in the face. (As opposed to scientists who chase them for research reasons…even non scientists, if they aren’t having a grand time as people’s lives are being torn up.)

Just had to get that off my chests.

My favorite memory (of many) of neighbor helping neighbor: my (then) husband and I lived in rural Illinois, between the corn fields. Literally. We had a huge blizzard, and when you have a blizzard among the fields, you get these huge, wonderful drifts of snow. But they block the road and you’re snowed in until it melts. (I miss that too.)

So we tried to get to town and of course got stuck in the drift on the road. Before we could even get out of the car and figure out what to do next, Mr. Smith, our farmer neighbor had fired up his tractor and was headed out to pull us out of the drift.

We always felt he had been watching us, two crazy kids, and was just waiting for us to get into the drift. He had his tractor keys ready to go.

And he had the best herd of cattle, too.

I’m thankful nobody was hurt today, as far as I know. Tornadoes suck balls.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 8:33 pm and is filed under A Nutter's Prattle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.