Tumbleweeds and Tornados

I was never good at math, and yet I sat there in my backseat prison trying to contemplate the required speed of the car to successfully jump out the door and calculate the exact angle of the roll needed to avoid major injury or certain death.

I loved my family but traveling with them locked in a confined tin can on wheels drove me to weighing options of broken limbs vs. the noise of the arguments both in the front and back seat and the smell emanating from shoeless puberty laden foot rot and flatulence.

Sometimes when we stopped, I fantasized a daring escape. I could stay in the bathroom and wait until they left. Or maybe I could sneak out at the gas station and hitch a ride on the back of a truck. My favorite was stealing a car when someone went inside to pay for their gas with the keys in the ignition and peel off to oblivion.

After all, I had three whole chances a day for a prison break. To traverse the country and back and see all the tourist traps, we needed to keep a schedule. So my dad decided three all in one stops per day for food, bathroom and gas were sufficient. No more, no less. If you needed a bathroom in between, you had to hold it.

But immediately all my fanciful ideas were dismissed. Where would I go? How far would my babysitting money take me? And of course, the biggest problem, I was too young to drive. Those and other obstacles kept me locked in the side window of the backseat.

It was stressful for all. But when faced with real uncertainty and pending doom, stress creates schism-like cracks or everlasting bonds.

Coming from opposite sensibilities, my parents rarely agreed on anything.

My father grew up on the rough city streets of Chicago. When he told stories of his youth, I often pictured the Bowery Boys-type mini gangster group of good-hearted juvenile delinquents. At nine years old, he took his six-year-old brother on the bus across the city to a ballgame and hustled pool for money in his late teens. But that upbringing gave him a larger-than-life persona and never say never attitude.

My mother was from a churchgoing family in a poorer more suburban area outside the city. She was taught to always follow the rules, be cautious, prepared and never take chances.

These two ideals often met in disagreement, especially on our month-long cross-country trek.

On this leg, we were driving through the mind-numbing tumbleweed fields of Oklahoma on our way to Texas. Looking out the window periodically between book chapters, I remember wondering if we were driving on some kind of automatic video loop, as the scenery never changed. Just fields and more fields.

There were the usual arguments within the backseat of this one taking up too much of the other's space and the inevitable kneesock-clad foot sword fights as this one was touching the other, followed by yelling and threats from the front seat. Just a normal day on a family road trip.

But in the short span of a minute, the sky turned from blue to solid white. Living in the Midwest, we all knew what tornado skies looked like. No clouds, no sun, just a blanket of white.

Noting the sky, my mother tried to tune in the radio to find a local weather station. The announcer confirmed it, there were tornadoes warned in the area several miles away but no sightings... yet.

"We need to stop and find someplace to take cover," my mother said.

"They just said conditions may cause tornadoes. No one's seen one. Let's listen and see what happens,"my dad argued. "Besides, we're traveling at 65 miles an hour. We'll pass this whole area before it gets any worse."

"65? The legal speed limit is 55 now," she snapped.

My dad regularly drove more than the speed limit. Just two years before, the government lowered all highways to 55 mph speed limit throughout the country…something my father never agreed with.

Usually I didn't pay much attention to the bickering in either the front or back seat, unless I was party to it, but that exchange made me look up from my book at the white sky and I began to pay heed.

It didn't move. It didn't change. It was as though someone painted it a solid white.

Then the announcer's voice began to quicken in pace. A tornado had been sighted.

"That's only 10 miles away," my mother said unfolding the accordion map to pinpoint the tornado's location. "We have to stop right now!"

"10 miles? No problem. I'll speed up to 75 and we'll be out of the path in no time," my dad assured.

"Outrun a tornado?" my mother shouted.

"If we stop, we have a better chance of getting run over by the tornado. Where we gonna go? We don't know the area and somebody's won't just let us into their basement," my dad reasoned and accelerated.

"This is crazy. We have children. We need to stop right now!" my mother insisted.

"Trudy," my father said in a lower toned, disapproving voice.

We all knew that voice. That meant the decision was made. No further discussion. We were going to try to outrun this tornado.

The radio announcer's cadence got faster with more reports of different towns sighting tornadoes. I wasn't sure if it was one or many tornadoes at that point, but it didn't matter. My father accelerated more in response.

Frightened, my mother gripped the dashboard white-knuckling it with both hands and I noted my father even had both hands on the steering wheel. Something I never saw before, as he usually drove with one hand on the wheel and the other elbow relaxed on the open window.

Concerned, I closed my book, tightened my seatbelt and pushed the button down to lock the door. Then I remembered something they told us in school when we practiced fire and tornado drills on a monthly basis. The teacher always made us open all the windows in the classroom. I didn’t really know why, but if the teacher said it, the advise was likely sound.

I cranked down my window and nodded to my brother to do the same. One of the benefits of a twin mind is some sort of innate telepathy. He understood and followed everything I did.

The air coming through the window was strangely warm and powerful, whisking my hair violently around my face. I could feel its fury as I saw the tall fields bend over from the strong winds. I wasn't sure whether that was good or bad. I remember an account of a tornado that took off the roof of the high school and everyone said the air was so still they couldn't believe it was there. So maybe a mean bluster was a good thing? But It didn't seem like it.

I held onto the armrest in the door and braced for impact watching the sky like a professional tornado spotter for any glimpse of a funnel.

No one spoke in the car as the deadened silence said volumes. We were all scared. Not understanding but picking up on the tense vibe in the car, my little sister began to quietly sniffle and cry. I put my other arm around her and pulled her toward me, but I had no time to comfort her. I was laser-focused on the sky.

In about 15 minutes time, it was all over. As if nothing happened, suddenly the white sky morphed into a pale blue and clouds poked out as if they were waiting for permission to pop. The breeze lessened eventually to nothing. We never saw a tornado. Whether it went the other direction or we in fact did outrun it, either way we were out of danger.

When it was certain we were in the clear, my father smiled and laughed a cackle of relief.

"How about that? Everything's fine now. We're all good."

"Really?" My mom looked at him in disapproval with her arms folded. "Now slow down," she snapped again.

I exhaled a sigh of relief, cranked my window up again and pulled out my book, continuing to read the adventures of Nancy Drew. After all, there were many miles to go and it was the only escape I had.