“The Big Scare in Barnwell – Part 1” March 15, 1961 Barnwell, Texas Age: 11 I didn’t believe it the first time I was told, “Be careful what you wish for! You may get it,” but I now know that little saying is far truer than anyone could have ever convinced me – until now. Up until this time last week, I was bored to tears by the lack of excitement in our sleepy little hick town on the high plains. It’s called “Barnwell” not because of anything to do with barns but because of the name of the founding family, “the Barnwells,” of course. They arrived in this area in the mid 1800s when Texas was still very much a US Territory. Then, when they found abundant flat and fertile land and discovered the nearby Slick Trace Creek, they knew their understanding of irrigation-supported farming would allow them to not only survive, but to prosper. That they did, and although various disasters and career decisions resulted in the current zero population of Barnwells, the town still bears their name. I reckon it always will. Since Barnwell’s in Texas and folks say everything’s bigger in Texas, you’d kinda expect it to be a big city, right? Well, it’s not. If Barnwell’s anything, it’s small,… …and it’s flat. In fact, everything in AND around Barnwell for as far as you can see is totally flat. The region here is called the “Texas Panhandle,” but that’s only because if you take out a map of the state, it looks kinda like a crooked frying pan with its handle facing straight north. I guess if it actually were a frying pan, Barnwell would be right at the edge of where the handle meets the pan. Eighty miles north of Abilene and more miles south of Amarillo, Barnwell is what the mayor calls “the Quintessential Panhandle Pearl” – whatever that is. I suppose a population of about 1,500 men, women and children qualifies for “pearl” status – or somethin’ like that. Cotton farming has been THE industry all around Barnwell ever since about the Civil War, and that’s what keeps the town alive today. Without cotton farming, I guess Barnwell would have been long gone a long, long time ago. There just isn’t anything else here. Of course, lots of hunters show up during the cold months to hunt pheasants, but that season only lasts a few weeks, and then they’re gone. Other than that, all we ever see are cotton farmers, cotton trailers, combines, and cotton, cotton, and more cotton. Heck, if we didn’t have the Plains Theater with its color movies and air conditioned auditorium, there might be totally nothin’ here! Of course, during the school year (like now), getting educated helps with the boredom quite a bit. If nothin’ else, I automatically get to see my friends every day of the week, and by the time I get my homework done in the late afternoon, it’s almost time to go to bed. That way, I don’t get as much of a chance to be bored – at least not until school lets out in May. Small towns like Barnwell usually don’t have their very own school, but apparently, a long time ago there was a big fight between the grownups in nearby Hail Center and the grownups in Barnwell. When the dust settled (actually it never has), Barnwell voted to build its own school and then to quit sending its youth 20 miles west to the larger and nicer schools in Hail Center. The result is that we do indeed have our own school - but notice I said “school” and not “schools”! Yep, we have exactly one school and all twelve grades go to classes there. I don’t know how many kids are in any other grade, but in my grade (5th), we have just one teacher and one class with seventeen of us in there. I’m the smartest and most handsomest 5th grader in town of course, but I’m not the best athlete; more on that later. Because my dad is on the School Board, he has to go to most every school event, and because I love him so much and want to be with him whenever I can, I went to the Barnwell High School Bears graduation last year, and I counted just 8 graduates. They looked good, and I know they’re smart, but I think you’ll agree that’s a pretty small class. Hopefully, my class will have at least 17 graduates in it when it’s our turn, and, of course, I’ll be the valedictorian (just like Jimmy Farebee was last year). I’m already workin’ on my speech! It starts like this, “My fellow Barnwellians, “ – and that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. Never mind… We live in one of the newer houses in town, but just like all but one or two of the rich farmer houses, it’s what my dad calls, “wooden frame” – or something like that. That’s’, by the way, important to keep that in mind because of what I’m about to tell you. This is tornado country, and tornados are doggone dangerous There used to be a little town call “Rock Spate” about 60 miles from here, and it can no longer be found (on the ground or on the map) because of what happened back in the 1920s. One particularly bad day in the spring of that year, a huge black tornado dropped down out of the sky and smashed Rock Spate to pieces. The only building left standing was the educational building of the Christian Church, and in it was found the only survivor of that incredibly tragic day. You see, the pastor’s wife had placed her baby boy in a crib in the church’s nursery while she worked on something in the office with her husband. She and her husband, and everyone else in that town, were killed in a matter of seconds, but that little baby didn’t even seem to notice it. Fortunately, he was too young to understand what was happening as rescue workers from Rotan bundled him up and carried him off to a foster home in Fort Worth. Poor little guy never knew his parents! Rock Spate’s no longer around – on the map or on the ground - not only because of that tornado, but also because workers from all of the nearby towns leveled every single piece of every broken structure in that town. Nothing was left standing, and for the buildings and houses that had concrete foundations, jack hammers and bull dozers finished the job. Not even a tiny piece of just one single foundation was left in place. I guess it was as if the earth itself didn’t want to remember the grief brought on by that disaster. In a matter of days, Rock Spate was just gone. Period. So, I told ya I had a reason for talkin’ about that, and it’s this: Daddy sat us all down - the whole family - and told us that if we ever see or hear a tornado coming, we must not, under any circumstances, remain in our home. He says it won’t stand a chance, and anyone still in it will be killed. Even if it’s only a little twister, we’ll be killed! We are instead supposed to run to the nearest storm shelter – ours out in the back yard if we’re at home when the storm hits. If we’re not home, he told us to just run and run and keep runnin’ full speed ahead until we find a storm shelter we can climb into. No matter what, we HAVE to get under ground and then just pray until the monster passes. I’m glad I listened to him because I wouldn’t be here tellin’ you all of this if I hadn’t. I’ll explain in a minute. Now, before I get into the big scare, lemme tell ya about Slim. That’s not his real name I now know, but up until the big scare, I really didn’t know him. I just knew what my friends told me, and what they told me scared the peewaddle outta me! Apparently Slim just showed up one day, bought a one-bedroom clapboard house down close to the oldest part of town (just off downtown) and then got real quiet. Nobody knew where he came from or what he was gonna do, but I can tell you first hand he never ever ever smiled – I mean NEVER. When I walk home from school, I sometimes take a little four block detour so I can see Main Street from end to end looking in both store windows as I go. You never know when Morrison’s will have new toy display, and I sure don’t wanna miss that. Of course, if you know anything about Barnwell and where I live and where Slim lives, you can see right away that my detour routinely takes me right past Slim’s house – which is on a corner lot. After leaving Main Street, I turn right and walk one block north to 1st street and then use the front corner of Slim’s front yard as my next (left) turning point. I used to step right onto his sidewalk and walk past the front of his house just to try and see him, but the one time I finally DID see him, he looked right at me with a smileless glare that made me think what my friends say is true! From that moment on, I was convinced that Slim really was a bona fide child murderer. So, I started walkin’ a block farther down Main before turning north so I could keep at least one block between me and Slim’s front porch – or any OTHER part of his house! I guess by now you’re startin’ to ask yourself what happened to make me think differently of Slim (who, like I told ya, really isn’t named, “Slim”). So I reckon I better get closer to the point of all this. See, last Tuesday started out to be a pretty normal day. Daddy drove me and my little brother, Sterling to school and dropped us off. Sterling’s in the first grade, and, like I said before, I’m in the fifth. Sterling gets out at 2:30, but I have to stay with all the bigger kids until 3:30. So, as usual, he walked home with his friend Donnie about an hour earlier than I did that day. Donnie lives right across the street from us, and as long as he can walk with Sterling, it’s ok for Sterling to walk home from school. Otherwise, Mom (or Donnie’s mom) has to drive across town to make the pickup. That day was a walking day for all of us. I didn’t notice much different as I left the school yard, but as I finished my patrol of downtown, I began to FEEL something different. The air seemed to be full of electricity, and, as the sky suddenly began to grow dark, I realized that there was absolutely no breeze. That NEVER happens in Barnwell. I’ve heard there’s nothin’ between Barnwell and the North Pole but a fence post, and that’s why the wind always wants to blow –either out of the south or out of the north; just never still. Well, when I looked straight down Main into the western sky, my face must’ve turned as white a sheet! There, quickly dipping up and down out of this massive black cloud that all but obliterated the western sky was the first real tornado I’d ever seen! It was big. It was angry, and it was headed straight for our little Barnwell! It took a few seconds of being frozen right there on the sidewalk in front of J. C. Mack’s law offices, but about the time I “thawed out” and took my first runnin’ step, the town’s tornado alarm began to wail. Before that whistle had bottomed out in pitch and began to squeal out its second loud warning, I’d already covered a half block and was pickin’ up steam. I knew I couldn’t make it the five full blocks I needed to cover to get to our own back yard. So, my initial plan was to make it to Mrs. Bailey’s back yard. That’s a half block north of Slim’s place, and I’d be passing up four or five other storm shelter opportunities on the way, but Mrs. Bailey is Sterling’s choir teacher at church, and I knew she’d welcome me right in. In fact, since she knows purt near everything going on in town, I figured she’d be holdin’ the door open for me. But, as I was about to get near Slim’s place, a blast of ice cold wind hit me in the face, and a huge hail stone hit me on the left shoulder. I was afraid I didn’t have time to make it another block before what happened to Rock Spate happened to me! That tornado HAD to be no more than a block and a half away, and I could already hear trees gettin’ ripped to shreds down towards our house. I had no choice if I wanted to live! So I did it! I must not have cleared Slim’s back yard fence by more than two inches, but I did clear it at full stride and took maybe three more steps before I was in position to reach toward the galvanized steel-covered heavy wooden door covering that little grassy mound in the middle of his yard. At the last second, though, I noticed there was absolutely no handle on the door (a door, mind you, that’s horizontal – i.e., nearly flat and almost level with the ground around it). It happened so quick that I can’t remember for sure, but I HAD to have panicked – but only for a second. As soon as I set foot on the seemingly out-of-place carpet in front of that door, the front edge of the door began to rise up on its own! I only had to hesitate long enough for one more hail stone to bean me on the top of my head before I was able to tumble down the concrete steps with the door slamming shut behind me. Then, in the total darkness of that storm cellar, I heard breathing just a few feet away. I wasn’t alone! # To Be Continued #
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 05:40:48 +0000
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