write about the tornado that hit the area I live in

Two sides to every story.

When the cleanup guy (Charlie) came back, he told quite a different tale about my neighbor.

“She was like a hornet,” he said. “She was all over me. You can’t put this stuff here. This is my property.”

And apparently a discussion ensued in which he said he was going to move it and tried to explain (according to him) that he just wanted to load from there.

Is that reasonable? Yes, because there is no place that fronts the street on my sloping property to put it where it would not roll into the road. She has a big area which was already littered with trees and debris.

So apparently two people with not enough caffeine in their systems got into it and neither would back down.

He told her that the area where he had the stuff was county property, she said no, yadda yadda.

Anyway, he said there had been no reason for her to come to me, because the last thing he told her was that he would move it. He said he had been planning to move her stuff too, to placate her, but now that she had come to me, he’d see her in hell first.

Sheesh. Communication is all, and I don’t think either of them did a very good job.

So I get a guy who promises he’ll be out here with ten men and clean up all my dead trees, fallen trees, and leaning trees for $3500.

It’s the best estimate I have gotten, so I agree. For two days, he and his crew work, cutting and burning and hauling away. Today, they are here again, cutting and burning and . . .

I hear a knock on the door. It’s a neighbor.

“Ordinarily I would not complain, but . . . did you know the guys working in your yard are stacking brush and logs in the lot across the street?”

“WHAT????”

“Yeah, I spoke to the guy about it this morning and he was not too nice . . .”

Holy crap. Do I have to watch everyone, every second?? I go down the driveway and speak to the guy who seems to be in charge.

“Where’s Mr. Charlie?”

“He went to get some chains.”

“Well, my neighbor says y’all are hauling trees to the lot across the street.”

“It was Mr. Charlie told us to do it.”

“Well, when Mr. Charlie comes back, you tell him I want a word with him.”

A bit later, I go down just to see what’s going on. One of the younger workers says, “He called Mr. Charlie.”

I go down to the foreman. “You called Mr. Charlie?”

“Yeah.”

‘What did he say?”

“He said haul them away.”

“Okay, good. Thank you. I have to live in this neighborhood, you know. Can’t make my neighbors too mad.”

“I know that’s right.”

Yes, I know what happened. The job is taking longer than he thought, so Charlie is cutting a few corners. Sorry, Charlie.

Last Sunday morning, May 11, I was awakened by lightning. Not the occasional bolt of lightning, but a shimmering display that kept the entire sky alight. Nick and I were sleeping in the sunroom as usual, and the many-windowed room was as bright as day.

I could hear the tornado sirens blasting, and I was torn between getting up to check it out or rolling over and going back to sleep. You’d think rolling over would not be an option. However, since our area switched from blasting the sirens at the sight of a tornado to blasting the sirens if conditions are right for a tornado, they go off all the time. In the summer, we have thunderstorms every afternoon. Conditions are always right for a tornado.

But the lightning—I had never seen anything like it. So I got up. Nick was awake, too, and I told him I was going to open a few windows and doors to equalize the pressure between indoors and out.

I came back into the sunroom, trying to decide whether to put Nick in the Hoyer lift and then in his chair to try to go to a central room in the house. Just then, all the lights went out. I covered Nick with big thick blankets. “Nick, if you hear a sound like a freight train, pull these over your head, okay?” Then I ran to get flashlights.

I came back, sat down beside Nick, and we waited. The storm howled and the lightning flashed. I never heard a frieght train, but all of a sudden, the whole house smelled of pine. I knew we had lost trees.

When the wind subsided, I went around to close the doors and windows. Rain and debris had blown inside, and the landscape outside, even in the darkness, looked reshaped and unfamiliar. Did we have a bush there? No, must be a tree blown over.

As the light of morning crept in from the east, I saw that our driveway was blocked by huge fallen pines. We were trapped in our house.

Worse yet, there was no power, and on this morning at least, there would be no coffee.

These trees were torn out by the roots. This rootball is taller than I am. I’d say 30 to 40 trees on our property were uprooted, bent, or sheared off at the top. Insurance covers zero because none of them hit a house or damaged property.

just missing our house.

Look at the poor little tree in the circular bed.

in our immediate area, and 15 in Georgia on the morning of Mother’s Day, May 11.

One of the tornadoes took a path that pretty much approximates the path I take to work: down the road by my house, across to the college campus, where 70 percent of the trees were downed and 4 buildings were damaged to the tune of 10 mill or so, then on down by the school where my hubby used to teach.

The picture is of my driveway last Sunday morning.