Our home was a ranch style, one-story stucco house with a big, brick porch stretched across the front. The porch swing was one of my favorite places to be when a big storm swept through our small town in southwest Kansas. I was endlessly fascinated by how a strong wind could bend full-grown trees so low that they would lean parallel to the ground. Then, when the storm passed, all the trees popped back up straight. Well, most of them anyway.
There were enormous trees everywhere in Greensburg, lining both sides of every street. It was a beautiful little town of about 1800 people, back in the 1950s and 1960s, when I was growing up there. Only thirty-five kids in my whole grade at school. You could walk from one end of town to the other in twenty easy minutes, bike it in five, waving to everyone along the way. My dog, Princess, and I knew every tree in town. Many were always so irresistible to me that I had to stop, lean my bike against the trunk, and climb up as high as I could go. Princess appreciated the chance to plop down and rest, so she waited patiently while I studied the sky and scanned the ground for anything interesting.
I've lived in New York for thirty-six years now and still think of my hometown with great fondness. One night in May, 2007, I heard about a giant tornado that was screaming through southwest Kansas. It was one of the first off-the-chart EF5 tornadoes and the weather channel was going bonkers. It was a mile wide at the base and was on a direct path to wipe Greensburg off the prairie. I knew everybody there would be deep underground and safe because we always had a superb warning system that people knew they could trust. So that made me less worried about a big death toll, at least.
I watched the coverage all night and into the next day and saw terrifying footage of familiar landmarks torn to bits and ground into giant piles of debris. All the trees disappeared, or were just stumps left behind, and that was so disorienting. On top of the shock of it all, I couldn't recognize my town anywhere!
Before all the dust had settled, my sister's brother-in-law drove by our old house and took a picture for us. It was still standing! It was one of only a few structures that did not fall. And, best of all, my old porch swing was still hanging intact, beckoning me to come and sit and try to make sense of this mess. Wow! I could have sat through a monster tornado, if I had just chained myself to the swing and held on for dear life. It's a fun thought anyway. The house was totally shifted off its foundation, even though it had managed to keep itself together, so the bulldozers came to plow everything down.
When I finally got back to visit, a month or so later, there was just an empty lot left behind. But the tree in the backyard, where my treehouse had been, still stood its ground. All its higher branches were missing but its trunk was still almost climbable. I was so proud of that lonely Cottonwood!
