A dark and stormy night...in the middle of the 80's

Last night a girlfriend I met my freshman year of Uni stopped in for a visit. She is traveling with her godson and they were wearing the same uniform - t-shirts and jeans - or khakis.

She's a genuine character: an army brat who has lived by her own rules since the day she left home for college. Truly. Last night she told a story I'd heard long ago and now I'll relish its retelling since I fear I'll lose it again if I don't tell it now.

GF happened to be hanging out in my hometown with two young men I'd known since grade school. They were walking on the levee smoking homegrown, no doubt. I was away at grad school and missed these middle 80's years in the south.

At the end of the evening she planned to drive back to campus, an hour or so away. The weather had turned since she's left home that morning. Folks from the Delta generally take the weather in stride. Farmer's anticipate the worst and compensate for it. Delta rats are accustomed to the black, blue or green skies of tornados when the rain can be like sheets of broken glass. Add hail to the mix and it is be a recipe for danger and fear. Funnel clouds are like large spinning dice. They are most terrifying because one never knows what they will hit and or do. They can pick up cars or houses or rearrange them in an elemental, implosive way.

Most Delta natives tend to take tornados in stride because of the low elevation and a strong levee system. It was constructed in the early 20th C by the army corp. of engineers before it was fashionable and acceptable to cut corners. Tornados are a game of hit and miss so the locals stay inside as far from the windows as possible.

My girlfriend has little experience with dramatic weather since she grew up in Germany. She's an excellent marksmen and very independent but she was terrified. The radio warnings and sirens convinced her she should stay the night. She didn't remember how she found the house I grew up in but she did. She knocked on the kitchen door, soaking wet with a six month old puppy in her arms. My grandmother, who spent weekends there since my mom left, opened the door. GF said she was a friend of mine and that she was wet and scared and asked to come in. My grandmother said sure. GF dripped into the kitchen only to see a handgun on the counter. She then realized that she was truly terrified. She asked my grandmother if she should be scared! "Oh, no." My Dad was still at work. It was a dark and stormy night.... My grandmother is and always had been a god- fearing, gun-toting Baptist who won't take crap from anyone but my grandfather who'd died in the 70's.

GF asked if she could watch the television to see where the storm was headed. She was, to say the least, freaked. My dad finally came home and while my grandmother prepared dinner for them both my father held court - which is what he does best. When he learned that GF's father was at the same Uni, the same time he was, he broke out the yearbook and looked up GF's Dad.
"He pointed his finger at my father's face, god rest his soul and proceeded to tell me many things about my father that I didn't know." My Dad said of her father "This man shot a lot of pool and played a lot of cards."

It turns out GF's father, who I knew as a man of the military, put himself through college hustling pool and cards before he enlisted. GF said they shot pool once. He hadn't had a stick in his hand in 20 years and he never missed a shot. He was the real deal.

My Mamaw made sure GF was comfortable in my old bedroom upstairs. At some point during the night GF was awakend by her hysterically barking pup. She got up out of bed and looked down on the mezzanine level of the "suite" I called home during my teenage years (my ivey tower, according to my Dad.) "There was a man wearing a top hat and 19th C clothing looking at his pocket watch on the landing. He looked up at me and then turned and walked straight through the closed door into my closet." Ghosts? Hmmm.

GF says that the night she spent with my family was one of those pivotal points of her youth. Although I was raised by a very colorful family I think my GF may have enjoyed some exceptionally strong weed with those college boyfriends. STILL... it makes a great story.

I'd left home by then. When I left for Uni I lived in the independent state of moi and when I left my home state for grad school that was it. I wish I had known then what I know now and that I hadn't always been in such a rush to grow up.

I was the oldest child and fiercely independent. I could have lived at home and gone to art school on scholarship - but no. I made my own way and paid for it with grants, other scholarships and a great of work study.