Tornado photos

Easter weekend (two days after the tornado) I went home to see my family and go to church, and after church Mama and I drove around. We kind of needed to see things for ourselves to really get a handle on it. In case any of my hometown buddies would like another view of things, I put some of my pictures in the album linked below. Note, these were taken after two and a half days of cleanup had already taken place, but it still looks pretty awful. The photos aren't great, as it was a rainy day and the car was moving a bit.

Mena Tornado April 2009

Short video of Layla describing the effects of the tornado. Sorry about the wobble at the very beginning here. Layla is leaning out of frame because she wants to see my face, not the camera, while she talks to me.



(And another short vid of her.) She has seen The Wizard of Oz at least a dozen times, probably, so I wondered if she associated Mena's tornado with what she saw in the movie, but I didn't think to ask her.

In my last post, I said I hoped the main structure of the Middle School would be fine, but now the report is it's been condemned. I'm surprised at how upset I was by that news. I think I assumed that building would be there forever, and having a landmark like that is comforting, especially when it's a place that holds so many of my personal memories of my formative adolescent years. (As well as a lot of other people's.) I loved the fact that it had an upstairs - no other school nor most other buildings in town do, I loved the bathrooms with the old tile and the stalls made of solid wood, I loved the full sized windows that you could actually see out of. It was a good old building.

And it's a loss to the community: the auditorium hosted not only Middle School assemblies but dance recitals, beauty pageants, high school plays and more. And then there's the cafeteria, site of generations of proms and band banquets. (I'm sure it says something about me that I'm way more nostalgic about those band banquets. Remember how Mr. Gray would dance with each of the senior girls? It was so sweet.)

Well, that's enough moping about a building. The students have been moved to a church and an empty school in the next little town to finish out the year, and people are continuing to clean up their homes and workplaces and figure out what to do. I'm curious about the libraries and I've even had some librarian friends asking about them, so if anybody knows how the books fared at the Middle School, Community College, and public library, I'd love to know.

To end on a lighter note, here's a picture of Allie and Layla from Easter Sunday.