A Charred Life 
Blown Away
Ever since the 1953 killer tornado struck Waco, I’ve been fascinated with the awesome spectacle and horrifying history of Texas twisters.
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The Wichita Falls Tornado was a monster with multiple vortices—each one as big as an ordinary tornado—and the diameter of the funnel at times exceeded a mile. The footage is enough to terrify even the most seasoned storm chaser. I know of a great photograph of this tornado that hangs in the Branding Iron, a local restaurant where I sometimes eat. The vortices are wrapped around each other, and it looks like…a mating ball of water moccasins.
I saw several tornadoes in Wichita Falls when I was growing up. In 1958 a big funnel came spinning up the Wichita River, a mile from our house. My mother refused to seek shelter. “I’m frying pork chops,” she said. In 1964 a tornado sucked up a local man, and he found himself traveling like Dorothy through the vortex of the funnel. Above him was a spinning house trailer with a woman standing in the doorway. A mattress flew by, and he thought: “If I could just reach that, I’d go to sleep.” Then he lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital. For years afterward he haunted the downtown, telling his story to anyone who would listen.
The 1979 Wichita Falls Tornado was forecast. By that time, research had identified the supercells that can develop into tornadoes, and meteorologists were able to track tornadic cells accurately on radar. There were reports on the tornado that struck Seymour, sixty miles away. The local spotters were out, the sirens blew. Everyone should have known what was going to happen.
My brother lived in Wichita Falls, and when he saw the tornado coming, he threw his family into the car and took off. This was not a good idea, but my brother was already a storm chaser, and this was the first thought that came into his head. The tornado followed him all the way across town. What he remembers most clearly are the people who were not seeking shelter. As he passed a shopping mall, he saw scores of people standing in the parking lot, watching the tornado approach. He met other cars and blinked his lights at them—they kept driving right into the funnel. He passed people mowing their lawns, painting their houses, going about their business with death right on top of them. Ninety-four years after the Goliad Tornado, we can pinpoint almost exactly where they are going to strike. But it seems to make little difference.
NEARING BORGER, I SEE A LITTLE white curl of vapor in the sky, almost directly overhead. It twists and turns and expands. By the time I have passed through Borger, it has become a little cumulus with a strange yellow color, as if I were seeing it through thick glass. This looks like it might become a storm. I drive across the breaks of the Canadian River and down a dirt road to the site of the Battle of Adobe Walls. Here, in 1874, a handful of “hide men,” or buffalo hunters, held off more than five hundred Cheyenne and Comanche warriors for four days. The site is on a bend of the river. There are a few tortured cottonwoods, caliche bluffs all around. On the ground is a depression—all that remains of the saloon where the buffalo hunters made their stand. There is a monument to the hide men placed there by the whites; a monument to the Indians was recently placed there by the Indians. “They fought for what makes life worth living,” the legend says. Meaning, I am sure, freedom. I can see nothing else here worth fighting for.
I am now on the other side of the 100th meridian, and this country looks just like Wyoming. I hear a thin cry. A figure is walking across the caliche bluffs, more than a mile away, followed by a dog. He waves at me, and I wave back. Then I hear three flat rifle shots. It doesn’t sound like the rifle is pointed directly at me, but this is a little disconcerting. Now I can hear him singing. I look through my binoculars. He is a young man who wears a denim shirt with the sleeves cut off. He carries his rifle on his shoulder. Once he staggers and falls down, drunk as a lord. I go about my business, looking at the old foundations. He keeps singing and occasionally firing his rifle. He seems to express all the brooding menace of this lonely terrain.
But the cumulus to the south is blowing up, building into a beautiful storm. I feel the quiet exhilaration I always feel in the presence of a storm, and this storm has a good presence. Another begins building to the north, and now we have a whole line of cells, a great wall of storms marching off across Oklahoma. It all happens as quickly as if I’m seeing it in time-lapse. I am at the center of things after all, the locus where today’s energies concentrate. Now it is time to try to catch that storm, and perhaps see a tornado.
On May 22, 1987, another monster tornado struck the small West Texas town of Saragosa. This, the most recent of the great Texas tornadoes, killed 30 of the town’s 183 inhabitants. Witnesses described it as “a very dark wall a half-mile across” and reported that two clouds collided and began “spinning like a girl doing a Spanish dance.” Why did the victims not seek shelter? There was a watch that day, and there was a warning for the cell that produced the tornado. Everyone should have known it was coming, but the victims tell us they did not. Perhaps they were hypnotized by the funnel, as a bird is said to be hypnotized by a snake. The sight of a funnel is spellbinding. First of all, nothing that big should be moving. That in itself is enough to scare the pants off you. And the motion is uncanny—funnels look organic, as if the storm were alive and aware, and the sight freezes you with instinctive dread.
But I think the truth is that many people just do not believe the warnings. They forget the power of severe weather until it is too late. They think they have time to finish their coffee before they head to the storm cellar. Perhaps that will change. With the advent of the camcorder and the Weather Channel, tornadoes have become something else—entertainment. Now there is Twister. Who can doubt that after seeing it, scores of would-be tornado chasers will take to the road?
I suppose everything in America must become entertainment sooner or later. But I do not think this interest in tornadoes will last forever. In the world of Twister the funnels are everywhere. In reality, storm chasing means eating road food and driving for hour after hour without seeing anything—and, as my brother says, “Your butt gives out long before the storms do.”
I will keep chasing storms because I have been fascinated with them since I was a child. First, there was fear—when the rumble of thunder could send me running to the front hall closet to hide among the laundry bags. Then there was dread—when I was afraid but somehow drawn to my fear, which was the strongest emotion I had ever felt, and a great relief from the boredom of childhood. Now I love these storms because they make me love Texas more. The plains are a hostile terrain, but somehow they look better when seen from a moving car with a storm on the horizon. These storms make some part of Texas manifest that is ordinarily invisible, and I cannot imagine chasing storms in Illinois or Indiana. It would not be the same.
I DRIVE EAST ALONG U.S. 60, the biggest cell just to the south of me. Now I hear tornado warnings on the radio. There is a funnel on the ground out there, and if I get close enough, I can see it. Soon I meet a red Mazda with a whip antenna, storm chaser decals, and three teenage boys leaning forward in excitement. But they are going in the wrong direction. Fine—I want this storm all to myself.
Ahead are the Boundary Mounds, more little caprock mesas on the 100th meridian. I am following the path of the Great Tri-State Tornado of 1947. But the plains are endless and seem even more so in the dying light. Out here, the most incredible fact of all seems to be that the Tri-State Tornado could have hit the only town in hundreds of square miles of nothing.
I hit the brakes and pull over. Standing by the side of the road is a cube of pebbly gray concrete with barred windows and an iron door. The Glazier jail. It seems to stare back at me. I feel a warm sense of renewal that has no logical origin but is simply an emotion of faith confirmed: The legends are true after all.
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