I'm often tempted to call this house, "Half-Mile Cottage" because it's that distance from just about any place we need to go. We drove the half-mile to the store and the rain was coming down fairly well, but from what I could see, it was nothing worth worrying about. Not even umbrella-worthy. When we got inside, Joel went off to get his hair cut and I headed for the pharmacy. While looking for a temporary filling product, the lights flickered and I could hear that it was beginning to thunder outside. To hear thunder from inside a Walmart, between the PA announcements, people's ring tones, and screaming kids, is no small thing. Then the lights went out completely and the dim emergency lights came on. People oohed a little, then went back to their shopping. My first thought was, "Is this where I really want to be during my first close encounter with a tornado?" I saw my life flash before my eyes and this ending was incongruous; death by tornado in the local Walmart wasn't in my Akashic record. I went back to my shopping as well.
Not finding what I wanted, I headed back to where the hair salon is and saw that the resourceful girls who work there had moved their clients—still in their chairs—out to the front aisle where what little light there was enabled them to carry on with their snipping. There sat Joel beneath his drape, smiling at me while a stylist worked on him. I waved, ditched my empty cart, and walked toward the doors of the store, where a small crowd had gathered to look outside. It was a rain white-out out there; it came down so heavily that even the cars in the parking lot were hidden by it. The cash registers must be on a generator, because people were still being checked out and some people were leaving with full carts. This was a good sign.
I'd forgotten to bring my phone, so I couldn't call home to find out if our power was out there, but since it's only half a mile away, I concluded that it probably was. I thought of Nettl and Micah sitting in the living room with candles lit and was glad that the storm had hit before we had a freezer full of food. I went back to the salon and waited for Joel.
As I sat there, big, male employees walked around shining flashlights at people. I'm not sure what they thought they were going to find. Looters? One shined his light at me, but all I had on my lap was my collection of Walmart eco-friendly shopping bags, empty and folded. Everyone was in a pretty good frame of mind about the situation, talking and laughing. No one was looting anything, getting impatient, or even acting concerned. Sooners are made of hearty, continually bemused stuff. It's what I like best about them.
When Joel was finished we left the store, running to the car in the torrential downpour. Driving home, it was clear that the entire city was in the grip of a black-out. We made it home and found our family exactly as I'd imagined them, in the living room talking by candlelight. Hell, we do that anyway. Outside, the thunder and lightening went on and the wind blew the neighborhood's 80 year-old trees pretty well.
An hour or so later, the lights came on and we all decided to go to the new Walmart across town (where we shopped before we moved). As we drove, we saw tree limbs all over the ground, on top of rooves, and in the streets. Pretty good storm! It was when we got out of the car that we saw a complete double rainbow. I hadn't thought to take my camera, so this beautiful photo will have to do.
At this time of year, the town is full of students from far off, foreign lands and, on the way home, as we came to a non-functioning light, we saw two Chinese girls trying to cross the main highway that goes through town. The red lights were flashing, but it was obvious by the way they kept pushing the little "walk" button that they couldn't figure out what was going on. No one was letting them cross, and they were getting soaked. When we stopped, we waved them to cross, and they smiled gratefully at us, running with their jackets pulled over their heads.
Later, after Nettl went to bed, I took my glass of wine onto the front porch and sat to watch the next storm blow in. Because the rain was blowing diagonally from east to west (our cottage faces west), I was perfectly dry out there and the candle on the bistro table didn't even flicker. When I came in to go to bed another storm was blowing in and I went to sleep to the rolling thunder.
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Photo credits: Double Rainbow by Ken Rockwell
