Twister!

My wife and I toured New York City with a group, and after our orientation lecture, which consisted mostly of a bag and body count, I suggested a stroll along the western front of Central Park for some fresh night air.

Our host said that whereas the Big Apple was a sight for sore eyes, particularly when there was no wind to blow the soreness out of state, (continued on page 200)Twister!(continued from page 141) night strollers should be cognizant of the following tourist traps, some of whom might follow you for blocks: muggers, purse snatchers, pushers, pullers, gangs, gangsters, arsonists, kidnapers, hijackers, winos, contagious or deranged outpatients, unemployed people and prostitutes or dogs in heat.

It is the ambition of all males native of the Southwest to be suckered by a prostitute.

We went outside. That was thought to be a demonstration commensurate with rolling in a waste product or some other alleged fuel substitute to protest the price of gasoline, because a mugger had been sighted up the block, gliding our way.

The night was safe. We walked. We skipped. There were a family from Texas and some honeymooners from Kansas, and we formed teams and played hide-and-seek on the fringes of Central Park. Other tour members, firmly entrenched in the hotel lobby, likened our behavior to that of a rube who'd flick ashes in the face of a Hell's Angels pledge.

Those of us walking under the mugger alert that evening were joined by a geographic bond that makes neighbors of anybody living west of Kansas City and east of Denver, and by a spiritual bond that is known as the Bible Belt; and if you take transparencies of those two bonds and place one over the other on a map of the United States, you have Tornado Alley.

Tornado Alley is that area from north-central Texas up through mid-Kansas, where it happens every spring. I am from Tulsa. I was the guru of that particular group of vacationers. In 1976, only 28 tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma, and I was so happy I quit drinking, only to resume with a vengeance in 1977, when we had 54.

The wind comes down the plain, all right, only sometimes it vacuums instead of sweeps. Some find it contradictory that Tornado Alley infringes on that loop of the Bible Belt. I find it self-explanatory. That is God's country, and He is clearing it prior to occupancy.

A tornado can kill or humiliate you. It can strip away basic protective devices, such as courageous auras, roofs and pith helmets. It can catch you with your pants down or it can take your pants off.

There are an average of 662 tornadoes a year in the United States, with more than half occurring in April, May and June. In 1977, there were 852; Oklahoma gets anywhere from about eight to ten percent of the yearly total, many of which we try to export. Tornadoes usually move northeast. In return, Missouri probably recommends Oklahoma to welfare applicants.

A tornado is the ultimate horror story--fear of the unknown, that which intimidates, stalks, sucks and multiplies. It is nature's bastard offspring, an unnamed orphan. Although hurricanes are given feminine names, tornadoes are more masculine, and they are merely known as sons of bitches.

After reading Jaws, the only thing residents of the Alley were afraid of was affairs. We think of high-rise fires and earthquakes and hurricanes and mid-air and mid-ocean collisions as borderline science fiction, as likely as consecutive blackjacks dealt from a single deck and as sinister as the Luxembourg infantry.

We strolled that night until a cloud gave Brooklyn an overdose of lightning. In April of 1974, a tornado hit a little of Canada. On June 9, 1953, tornadoes killed 90 in central and eastern Massachusetts. Any place with hot and cold running air is vulnerable.

Tornadoes are often preceded by a dazzling display of lightning of the variety that was hung out like a sheet over the Brooklyn Bridge.

We evacuated the street and set up a protective circle in a tavern. Our group of strollers was praised for finally coming to its senses, because we were obvious marks.

"To the children of the street," we toasted.

May a tornado never drop one on our heads.

•

When I was a preteen living in Oklahoma City, my mother would rush us to the southwest corner of our house during a tornado warning, and while we hid under a mattress, my father read magazines and swallowed whiskey; but, unfortunately, such preventive measures have been exposed as folklore.

Tornadoes can expose anything.

It has been proved that hiding in the southwest corner of a dwelling is safer than hiding under the southwest corner of a milk cow, is about all. For years, people have gone from room to room, searching for a neutral corner, but it has been conceded that a southwest nook is no more immune to suction than a northeast nook. About the only bit of advice that has remained intact down through the years is, get the hell under something that won't collapse and squash you. And a tornado that hit Tulsa in 1974 hit a beer store and Oral Roberts University, thereby dispelling a number of myths passed along to me by an old Indian.

"Tornado like big-name entertainment," the old Indian said. "Never hit Tulsa."

I bought him a cold one. I told him that I lived on the 15th floor of a high-rise apartment building and that my whiskey and tobacco bill the spring before had been $250. In addition to what you can scratch, tornadoes also attack the most private of parts, such as livers and lungs.

The old Indian said, "Funnel like ancient buffalo; love to graze."

He told the next person who bought him a drink, a person who said he had just built a one-level home, "Tornado like urban renewal; eat buildings."

"Old Indian like ancient buffalo chip," I said. "Always dry."

After the tornado hit Tulsa in 1974, I looked up the old Indian, and he said that when the Tornado Never Hit Tulsa myth was originated, Tulsa was much smaller. Had the 1974 tornado hit in, say, 1905, "Tornado miss Tulsa, bad."

A child living in Tornado Alley often learns how to identify and react to a tornado before he learns how to classify sexual urges, which might be why some more mature residents of the Alley find something sensuous about the counter-clockwise downward thrust of a funnel, and that might also be why a young lady I used to know, who had been in three twisters as a girl, used to enjoy making love on a Lazy Susan.

I still believe many rumors concerning freaks of nature.

It comes under the heading of "Know Your Enemy."

I got to know him real well. He lived near us and he had the foresight to construct a bomb shelter in his back yard because the Russians were going to attack North Georgia Avenue in Oklahoma City during the Fifties. In the event the Russians broke through the outer door of his bomb shelter, he was going to give them a pickle and tell them that he had mistaken the Russian bombers for tornadoes, because tornadoes sound like freight trains, diesel engines, bombers and people pounding on bomb shelters.

"Let me in," I once said. "I am afraid of tornadoes."

"Maybe this will teach you not to laugh at citizens who invest in all-purpose preventatives."

It almost did.

It was computed that a specific location would experience a tornado only once every 250 years. That computation, probably compiled by an odds maker in northeast Nevada, was obviously made before Baldwyn, Mississippi, was struck (continued on page 276)Twister!(continued from page 200) twice during a one-hour period on March 16, 1942, and before Codell, Kansas, was hit by tornadoes in 1916, 1917 and 1918, all on May 20, and before Oklahoma City was dealt some 80 tornadoes between 1950 and 1977. It has since been concluded by residents of Tornado Alley that probability charts and other such vagaries are as reliable as predictions of rain, in percentages.

A tornado did not hit me the night I begged admittance to my neighbor's shelter, and the all-clear signal can be likened to a good chest X ray, in that it makes you want to have a cigarette and relax. When my neighbor crawled out, I told him that it was asinine to expect Russians or tornadoes at midnight, because, as everybody knows, Russians and tornadoes prefer the filtered light of dusk. About 35 percent of all tornadoes in Oklahoma take place between three and six P.M. About 31 percent happen between six and nine P.M.

I was able to maintain that effrontery of mock bravado until the tornado warning the next evening, when I offered to buy three square feet of beautiful all-purpose shelter for the going rate of Pacific ocean frontage.

A tornado, which contains winds that average 100 to 150 miles per hour, is generally repulsive to witness; but just as there is an offbeat beauty before a bolt of lightning hits a three iron, the tornado that connected itself to Tracy, Minnesota, on June 13, 1968, was thin and tapered like an elephant's trunk. In contrast, the beast that razed Xenia, Ohio, on April 3, 1974, looked like an elephant's butt with diarrhea, a revolting shaft that killed 34.

For many years, it was assumed that all tornadoes were made up of a single vortex, or funnel. That is also folklore, along with the supposition that tornadoes will not strike religious institutions, rivers, Chinese restaurants, old Indians, whorehouses or cities with an X in their names. The single-vortex theory is even more debatable than my aunt's belief that tornadoes are sent to punish my uncle because of his weakness for cheerleaders.

In 1974, a tornado was filmed in Indiana containing at least four suction vortexes, all rotating individually around a central point. The tornado was comprised of four smaller tornadoes.

Averages of past tornado performances are as reliable as averages of past 30-game winners. The average width of a tornado is 500 yards, but the one that rode through Lubbock, Texas, in 1970 was a mile and a half wide.

There are as many theories pertaining to the spawning ritual of a tornado as there are theories pertaining to the spawning ritual of a headache or a fish. With a tornado or a headache, hiding under the bed often helps.

The Mechanical Theory stipulates that a tornado is caused when cyclonically rotating winds flow toward a central point near the base of the thunderstorm. As the radius of the rotation decreases, something else increases, producing tornadoes. That is also known as the Oh, Christ Theory, because it takes a lot of twine and guts to measure the radius of cyclonically rotating winds.

The Thermal Theory advances the belief that tornado formation is a result of energy changes that take place when cool air overrides warm air. There is a rapid upward convection that produces a rotary low in the thunderstorm and finally produces a funnel. Simply put, when the weatherman's eyes are as big as half dollars, beware. That activity can be better understood by the layman if he hits himself in the chin with his fist.

Another theory indicates that atmospheric electricity causes rotary winds in thunderstorms to increase.

To simulate any of these theories, the new resident of Tornado Alley needs but a small, bladed air fan, and the urge to go to the bathroom.

A more recently conceived theory is that there are a hell of a lot of tornadoes because there are more automobiles, and, as everybody knows, in Tornado Alley we drive on the right side of the highway, except during tornadoes and on Saturday nights. The counterclockwise air flows that result from cars passing on the highways produce swirls that will later appear as organized tornadoes.

I don't believe that.

There are more tornadoes around six P.M. because that is when everybody turns on the garbage disposal.

•

Knowing your enemy is half the battle; surrendering with honor is the other half.

I was well prepared for the tornado that hit Tulsa on June 8, 1974. I was drunk. I had seen one tornado previously, while driving west through Kansas in 1960. That was the last time that feat had been attempted by anybody who was not poor, lost or fleeing the law. I saw that tornado hit a farm. It was as if a straw were connecting heaven with a field of vegetables. God was hungry.

I got out of my car and crawled into a ditch and I threw up on myself, and because the tornado missed me by a good half mile, I have since been known to throw up on myself every time I drive in Kansas.

After I cleaned myself, I drove over to see if the farmer needed assistance, or an amen or two, because his house was all right. The farmer lost a silo, some cows and one of his ten lives. (Farmers in Tornado Alley are like cats in traffic. They get nine lives as credit for farming, plus a bonus life for regularly contributing to the church of their choice.)

The farmer was going fishing.

"They bite better after tornadoes," he said.

They are also easier to pick up.

On June 8, 1974, my wife and I were guests at Bob and Caroline Gregory's in residential Tulsa; and whereas the Gregorys are nice people, they live by a creek that floods when it rains a lot; therefore, I always drink conclusively when I am there, because I cannot swim. And whereas the Gregorys' house is a nice house, with central air and house plants, it does not contain the most recent innovation in household tornado detection, the pressure device that is even more revolutionary than the anchor that keeps mobile homes from orbiting during a twister.

The pressure device is like a burglar alarm. It reacts to pressure. When there is a drastic pressure change within the confines of a house, an alarm is sounded, meaning two dozen burglars armed with Mace in spray cans have just kicked in 25 windows or that a tornado may be breaking and entering.

After dinner, a radio announcer, up two octaves from normal, reported that a tornado had been sighted near Drum-right, Oklahoma. I have a drink every time a tornado is sighted. When a tornado is within 50 miles, I have two drinks.

Just as the bomb shelters of the Fifties converted nicely into tornado shelters and places to pickle, and the air-raid sirens converted nicely into tornado sirens and birds' nests, the flying-saucer sighters of the Fifties now sight tornadoes. Whereas many saucers were in reality airplanes and Venus, I try to assume that many of the reported tornadoes are nothing more than somebody's imagination multiplied by fear and subtracted from common sense.

"Probably just a tall building," I said of the tornado near Drumright.

"There are no tall buildings in Drumright," my wife said, pooping the party.

The announcer then reported that Drumright had been relocated by a tornado. Radio announcers make me nearly as nervous as tornadoes. After a tornado had been sighted near Tulsa some years back, an announcer said, "A tornado has been sighted. Do not panic. Panic is our own worst enemy. Just do what you can to save your lives."

Second radios and television sets are not a luxury. They are our extra eyes and ears and something to crawl under.

We went out back and looked at the sky, which appeared about to lay eggs. Almost everybody in the neighborhood was in a back yard, looking up.

Although you cannot prevent tornadoes, you can track them. You can project their courses with the assistance of the weather bureau's Weather Search Radar-74 unit, which can pick up a hook echo, meaning a tornado, from as far away as 125 miles. The unit is also capable of measuring a storm's intensity. Advance warning saves lives.

"Neighbors," I said, "it is a damn shame that small tornadoes with only one- to three-minute lifetimes and wind speeds of around 100 miles per hour don't usually show up on the damn radar screens."

"The way Drumright doesn't show up anymore," said Kendall, the Gregorys' seven-year-old daughter.

One neighbor threw a stick at me for scaring his children.

I threw him Oklahoma's native bird, the Double-jointed Take That.

"Drunken lunatic," he said.

He was just jealous.

We went back inside.

Scotty, Bob and Caroline's three-year-old son, asked what a tornado was, exactly. I explained that "tornado" is a Latin derivative of "to turn," and I swirled Scotty around my head by his ankles.

Caroline wrung her hands.

My wife had a vodka and tonic, leaving me with two. I told her not to throw the ice out back into the creek, it would bring the water over the bank.

Kendall said nothing as a television station went off the air because of the storm.

Jason, the Gregorys' seven-day-old son, cried because of general principles.

We needed a leader.

I suggested an old favorite among Alley residents, Plot the Lightning. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second, and sound travels at about 1100 feet per second, or a mile in slightly less than five seconds; therefore, you can tell how far away a bolt of lightning is by counting seconds until thunder.

Lightning. One, one hundred. Thunder.

"That lightning hit me in the thigh," I said.

When the announcer said that tornadoes were in the immediate area, Caroline suggested that we retire to the bathtub. I said, "A friend of mine who teaches geography and atmosphere at the University of Tulsa says that he survived two tornadoes while living in Livingston, Illinois, and that during each tornado, the center contained a yellowish-green haze that was easily visible.

"We might be alert for that.

"Also, the actual strike may be preceded by a prolonged dose of lightning."

The electricity came back on and I stuck my head in the toilet.

"This is just like The Wizard of Oz," my wife said to Scotty.

He asked, "Who?"

"Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz invented no-frill flying," I said.

"Oh, hell," my wife said. "He is officially crocked."

I made one final attempt to spark our spirits. Tornadoes are fickle. I told everybody about the cow near Shawnee, Oklahoma, that was lifted by a tornado, carried one mile, then placed back on its feet, alive, and I told them the one about a chicken that was plucked by a tornado, and lived, and I mentioned the tornado that lifted a rug from beneath a family, without harming its passengers. Unfortunately, I also told them about the man who had a feather driven through his jugular, and the man who had his head twisted off, and the man who had his eyes sucked out, and the man who had a sliver of glass driven through his foot.

"I'm glad I'm a girl," Kendall said.

Bob closed his eyes. I tried. I couldn't. I looked in the mirror to see why.

"Look at my eyes," I said. "I have red jaundice."

When it got about as dark and loud as possible, the Gregorys got into the bathtub, and because it was their bathtub, my wife and I assumed positions flanking the toilet.

Somebody got out of the tub and went to the bathroom.

I could have perished.

The tornado went over the house, and it caused about $25,000,000 in damage to other parts of Tulsa. My wife said it took her four hours to drive five miles home, because many of the neighborhoods had been stirred like a green salad. I woke up once, noticing houses in the street and cars in the yards, and a tree coming up out of one living room. I guessed that I was dreaming. It was not a particularly bad one, as nightmares go.

After they put me into the car and we left, the Gregorys' house flooded, and they put seven-day-old Jason into a beer cooler and floated him to the rescue boat.

We spent the remainder of June eighth in our apartment's laundry room, washing one pair of socks to death. Kendall called the next day to thank me for helping them through a difficult time.

I apologized for passing out on the bathroom floor.

"Only eleven more years," she said.

One may legally drink beer at the age of 18 in Oklahoma.

So spare us the locust plagues and avalanches and killer-bee assaults and volcanic eruptions and train derailments and radiation poisonings and mine caveins and roller-coaster hijackings of the future, for $3.50 per ticket at your favorite first-run indoor theater.

We'll catch them next spring at the drive-in, for a more justifiable price and better mobility.

"'Tornado like big-name entertainment,' the old Indian said. 'Never hit Tulsa.'"

"I was well prepared for the tornado that hit Tulsa on June 8, 1974. I was drunk."