Tornado!

This photo, taken Dec. 10, 1967, shows the path of a tornado through the Belaire Subdivision of Fort Walton Beach. Our house is at the bottom, slightly left of center.

I wrote this essay on March 25, 1972, which would have made me 16 years old at the time.

TORNADO!

We, being myself, my parents, my younger sister and at the time, my older sister, live in the town of Fort Walton. Fort Walton is a bustling community of about 20,000 people on Florida’s northwest Gulf Coast. Like most other communities of this day, it is threatened by the incessant pincers of commercialism, but of course, that has nothing to do with my story. Although I was only 12 at the time, I remember that morning more vividly than any other day of my life.

On December 10, 1967, at exactly 3:00 AM, I was awakened by the sound of thunder. There was a terrific thunderstorm in progress, one of the most severe I had ever experienced. There had been tornado warnings issued for our county along with several others the night before, bat at the moment, this did not even enter my mind. The lightning was incredible, it was flashing almost continuously and the thunder never halted in roaring. I lay there for 5 minutes listening to the din, when I decided to make a game of it. Using a scale between 1 and 10, I would rate each flash of lightning according to it’s intensity. If an extremely bright flash occurred, I would give it a rating of 7 or 8, and if a dim flash occurred, I would rate 2 or 3. I played this game for 10 minutes, until to my disappointment, the lightning mysteriously ended. The time was 3:15 AM. I lay back, bored once again, and listened to the steady drum of rain upon the roof. Occasionally, one enterprising raindrop would strike one of the pipes that jutted from the roof, sending a tiny “clang” down into the house. I had, by that time, decided to go back to sleep, when something terrible happened.

There was a stupendous flash of light, almost brighter than description. It would compare with confining a person to a pitch black room then suddenly setting a flashbulb off in their eyes. The light was bluer than it was white, and at first, I had thought lightning had struck the house, or either a tree out in the yard. I prepared myself for the thunder that would follow a flash of that proximity, but I was not prepared for what did follow.

A tremendous roar filled the air. Immediately I caught the sound of glass breaking and wood splintering. I kept asking myself what was happening, and I could not believe that this was our house I was hearing destroyed. By now I knew this was not thunder, and could not figure out what was happening. I sat up in bed and turned my head just in time to see a section of glass strike the wall and shatter into a thousand pieces. The terrible roar continued, nearly drowning out the rest of the sounds. The house shook as if some giant hand had grabbed it and was trying to empty it of it’s contents. Even though the curtains were drawn, my room was as bright as day. I have heard that tornadoes are often accompanied by spectacular displays of lighting; this one certainly was. This whole conglomeration of smashing, tearing and roaring took place over a period of about 15 seconds, and I still had not figured out what was going on.

Finally, the sounds grew fainter, then ceased. It grew quiet as death. The next thing I heard was the sound of my mother walking down the hall from her room, assuring me that everything was alright and not to be afraid. Personally, I am certain that she was much more afraid than I, for she would always tell us of her nightmares concerning tornadoes, she has had them years before this happened. I told her that I was alright and asked what had happened. Her reply was that a “little windstorm” had occurred, and it was then that it finally dawned upon me that we had just experienced a tornado. My father was checking on my sisters. After he had done that he retrieved the gas lantern from the utility room, while my mother and older sister started cleaning up the mess. I was not allowed to get out of bed because of the glass on the floor, and I was unable to see because of the lack of light. The lantern was with mother in my sister’s room, and my father had our only flashlight with him in the living room while he covered broken windows with cardboard.

Naturally, a child’s curiosity is the strongest, and after a minor search I discovered a section of one of my old toys that had a flashing light; as good as I could come up with in that situation. The light would stay lit for 2 seconds, then would flash off for 2 seconds, then flash on for 2 seconds. This proved to be aggravating and revealed little. After much persuasion, I managed to wheedle my parents into letting me look around. I went into the living room and stared in amazement at the damage. Almost every window in the system of small rectangular windows that made sort of a picture window were broken out. They had been covered by pieces of plywood and cardboard. Small pine branches, slivers of wood, boards and glass dotted the floor. We found one spear of wood, a wedge shaped piece about a foot long, that gone through the front window, struck the T.V. taking a gouge out of it, then had struck the dining room table and skidded across the surface leaving scratch marks on it, then had struck the dining room window and partially gone through it.

I then visited my sister’s room and saw about the same thing, broke glass, tree branches, and wood. According to my older sister, Sandy, she had been awake when the storm had struck, and looked up just in time to see the windows bulge to an amazing degree, then break.

My parents had both been awake when the storm struck. My mother jumped from her bed and tried to open the door to my sister’s room, but she couldn’t budge it, while my father tried to close one of the open bedroom windows.

After everything had been attended to inside, my father started investigating the damage outside. We had just bought a brand new boat, an aluminum 14 footer, the very day before the storm struck. According to my father who came in about 10 minutes later, it was in our neighbor’s yard against a tree. While outside he had gotten into a comical conversation with that neighbor. It ended with the neighbor saying, “Would you mind getting your boat out of my yard?”

We sat and talked of the storm among ourselves for awhile, in the meantime 2 more of our neighbors came over, each giving his own account of what had happened, and a fireman knocked on the door to see if any of us were injured. After a few more minutes of talk we went to bed. It was 4:00 AM.

Sleep was impossible. It had begun to rain again, though very lightly. During the times of 4:30 and 5:00 AM I heard another rise in the wind and thought we were due for a second performance. It continued to rise but then dropped off. Another peculiar thing happened during this time. I heard a sound similar to chimes ringing in the wind. It sounded as if small pieces of glass were falling to earth. Both my mother and I heard this sound, as we have finally come to the conclusion that it was glass returning to earth, glass that had been sucked up by the storm.

At 6:00 AM we could remain in bed no longer. I remember rising out of bed and dressing myself. This reminded me of Christmas, the contemplating of what was to be seen from those remaining windows like a child will sit and wonder what lies in those gaily decorated packages under the tree. I looked first from my bed room window. There was a large triangular section of a roof that had been stabbed into the yard off to the left. Other than minor debris I could see nothing else from this vantage point. Looking out my sister’s window that faced our next door neighbor, I could see one downed scrub oak tree. The view from my parent’s room offered the best perspective of all. From it I could see twisted trees and sections of homes from who knows where, garbage and objects from patio. But the amazing sight was the house without a roof. We had not known the extent of the damage inflicted upon the area, and we were simply amazed that this had occurred.

As soon as my father had dressed, he, my younger sister and I piled into our 1966 Fairlane, and after dodging downed powerlines we managed to get out of the stricken area and to a gas station to buy fuel for our portable heater, stove and lantern. On the way back to the house we were halted by a National Guardsman. Even after my father explained to him that we lived in the area and had to get back to our house, he still refused to let us pass. Fortunately I knew of a side road we could take, and minutes later we were home, with nothing short of a flat tire.

My mother cooked breakfast, then we all went out to inspect the damage and to proceed with the inevitable cleaning up job.

Some of the tricks the tornado pulled were really amazing and quite frightening. The boat had been latched to it’s trailer and the trailer had been chained to an 18 or more inch thick pine tree with a chain built to resist 700 lbs of pull. Of course, the boat as you know was in our neighbor’s back yard, but the amazing thing was that the chain holding the trailer ahd been snapped and the trailer was lying in the same place, upside down with at least 50 feet of telephone wire wrapped around it! We had 2 garbage sitting beside each other before the storm, but after, one had been carried off, but not before it’s contents had been emptied over the yard. A short needled pine at least 2 feet thick and been twisted 3 times at the base of the trunk and it now lay upon our roof.

These are just a few of the tricks this monster pulled on Fort Walton. A compact car was found in a tree, a man, bed and all was carried into the middle of a 4 lane highway.

Some of the grimmer aspects of the storm was the 3 year old child killed by flying debris, the scores that were injured and hundreds made homeless. The funnel touched down in a major residential area, crossed a small bayou and smashed into another residential area, then after destroying a few businesses and a major discount store of the Gibson chain, it lifted into the clouds. Debris was found more than 20 miles away.

All in all, it was the worst disaster to ever befall Fort Walton. Over 5 million dollars in damage was done, and the city was declared a disaster area by Governor Kirk.

I know that I will never forget it; the story will be told by myself and members of my family for ages to come.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .