"Hurry! Com on everybody; get in the potato bunk!"

We ran as fast as we could to jump into the hole in the ground where my parents kept the potatoes. It had a roof over the top to keep out the rain, and the bottom was full of straw. My father had spotted a funnel cloud, so there was no time to spare. Mama brought up the rear, carrying a large torch made of a long, burning pine splinter.

As she came through the opening, she let out a gasp, and scurried to the far side of the potato bunk. Turning around, she pointed to a ledge just beside the door, where lay a huge snake. Gathering her senses and her nerve, she held out her torch and eased it toward the snake. He slowly crawled out into the night.

Emerging later, we found that the twister had skipped over us, or had turned away at the last minute.

Those early years were full of homespun adventure, a lot of it to do with weather. I soon developed a very simple philosphy about everything around me. Later, I would verbalize it. "It is what it is." This attitude enabled me to maintain a positive outlook and to be happy with whatever I had or didn't have. Even the time when a storm bledw the roof off of the house, we laughed and squealed as we dragged bed to try and find the dryest spots for them. My sister tested my mother's last nerve when she broke into song. "Oh, I'd rather be on the outside looking in."

In that time and that place, we had no weather forecasters to tell us what to expect, so old timers watched the sky constantly. Aftyer studying the horizon in every direction they might announce, "A cloudl's a comin' up." Or maybe, "Looks like we ain't gonna git a drop of rain this summer." My parents could look at a coming storm and tell by a slight color variation in the clouds that there was hail in it. By far, the most miserable weather was what they called a "blue norther." To this day, I can clse my eyes, and feel the bone-chilling ache in my arms and legs, and the sensation of ears and nose about to fall off from the cold. And this was inside the house!

As an adult, I came to see that our suffering stemmed from woefully inadequate clothing, shelter, and food. But we survived. I guess it is true that if an experience doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger!