— Maya Angelou
American Author & Poet
(b. April 4, 1928)
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Like many Bradley County residents, we completed our yard cleanup last Saturday in the aftermath of what Cleveland natives are calling the worst natural disaster ever to ravage our community.
That includes the April 1974 tornadoes, three years before my wife and I came to town.
It also takes into account the “Blizzard of ’93,” a deep freeze whose 21 inches of snow our residents will never forget.
Because EF-4 tornadoes tend to extend our newsroom shifts, I didn’t get home Thursday night — 24 hours after Mother Nature unleashed her fury — until well after dark. That evening my wife had already begun piling tree limbs, knowing that I would take them the rest of their way Saturday afternoon.
Like our neighbors, we were counted among the lucky.
Had the twister taken a turn here or a veer there it might have been our row of houses splintered to the foundation. We might have been among those relying on the soft hearts of volunteers to help us rebuild our shattered lives.
We live off Springplace Road about a mile east of the Durkee Road intersection, one of many Bradley County neighborhoods slammed by the multiple waves of violence. Looking from our kitchen window, my wife believes she might have caught a glimpse of the twister from beyond the treetops that uprooted trees, leveled a handful of businesses and probably gave Durkee Road residents the understandable fright of their lives.
Yet we can’t be certain.
At about that time we were biting our lips, peering through windows and going from front door to back door to carport door and back again watching the skies. It was arguably one of the most unnerving experiences of our adult years.
Yet the nearest funnel was a mile away.
I can’t even begin to imagine the torment felt by our fellow Bradley Countians whose homes and neighborhoods were devastated by those merciless storms. And for the innocent families who lost loved ones, I can only join the rest of our community in lowering my head and offering unheard words of condolence.
At times like these, attempts to explain such catastrophes are futile. Words are fumbled like candles in the dark.
Cleaning our yard over the weekend brought perspective — especially to those of us who were spared.
After chopping a small limb with my ax, I straightened my back and realized I was short on breath. I rubbed an aching muscle.
“This is killing my back,” I muttered, but audibly enough so that only my ears heard. As I stooped to pick up the shorter pieces of brush, I thought of my neighbors up the road who were sawing giant, slumbering oak trees, some of whom still rested atop crushed roofs.
Those thoughts brought perspective.
Later that afternoon I carried an arm full of broken limbs to a brush pile. As I tossed the load, one raw end of a tiny stem snagged my forearm, leaving a shallow scratch and a trickle of blood.
“Ouch!” I exclaimed. Wiping the wound with a dirty handkerchief, I thought of a man in the Mount Zion community whose house was crushed by the morning twister. The murderous winds collapsed the structure upon its helpless victim. Today he bears a gaping wound across his face that is held closed by 140 stitches.
Those thoughts brought perspective.
Once the broken limbs were collected and hauled away, I began the weekly task of mowing the grass while mulching the thousands of smaller twigs that littered our lawn.
“This is going to take forever,” I gasped inwardly. “It’s going to dull the mower blade for sure.” Then I thought of a Blue Springs Lane family whose stunned members probably stood that same afternoon in their own yard among the ruins of a home that exploded from nature’s fury at about the time I was peering through my kitchen window on that fateful Wednesday night. Their concerns didn’t involve mowing grass. They faced sheer survival in their new world of devastation and donated clothes.
Those thoughts brought perspective.
Finishing my chores by late afternoon, I repositioned a small yard figurine — an angel — that had been knocked from her pedestal by the gale-force winds. She was intact but badly muddied.
“Now I’m going to have to wash this off,” I mumbled, irritated at another interruption that was keeping me from going inside and taking a refreshingly warm shower. Wiping the mud from her face with the same dirty handkerchief, I thought of the rescue workers who likely wiped grime from the lifeless face of a tiny 3-month-old infant, one of nine heartbreaking deaths in our community.
Those thoughts brought perspective.
Who was I to complain?
How could I even remotely compare my nuisance inconveniences with the plights of the hundreds who, on that same afternoon, probably felt an emptiness and helpless despair like they had never before known?
I carefully returned the angel to her resting place.
And returned to my work.
Those thoughts brought perspective.
