"Get down here!" yelled mom from the basement. "Hurry up, the storms coming," she shouted as I quickly opened the basement and ran down the stairs. Mom, dad and my sister Dana were already in the corner of the dark, dusty basement huddled together. It was no big deal for a storm to blow through central Oklahoma in the summertime like the one that was happening now.
"We get these storms every year guys. It's not that big of a deal."
Just as I said that, a loud crashing sound was heard upstairs. It sounded like someone had driven a car through the wall of our house and tore it to pieces in the process.
I was a little scared at that point. I did not know what had just happened. Did a tornado rip through our home leaving its mess behind? Nobody knew!
What seemed like an eternity later, mom sent dad upstairs just to take a peek and see what had happened. Meanwhile my sister Dana was holding on to me for dear life. As if I was the only person in the world who could make her fear disappear. I was fine with this. I love my sister dearly and I would do anything in the world to protect her.
Dana is a nineteen year old freshman at the local community college. I, on the other hand, was twenty-two and decided not to go to college. I wanted to enter the work force right away after high-school; so with some training from a friend of my dad's, I became a welder. A pretty good one, I might add.
Dad came down stairs and mom looked at him frightened and said "What is it? What was that loud noise?"
"You're not going to believe this but a huge branch from that oak tree in our front yard fell on our roof!"
"Oh no," I thought. "This can't be good."
After a few minutes the storm was over and we all slowly returned upstairs to survey the damage that had just been done to our house.
"Well I'd better call the insurance adjuster," was the first words out of dad's mouth.
"I'll check with some friends to see if we can spend a few days with them while all this gets taken care of," mom said.
Unfortunately, none of mom or dad's friends had room for all of us to stay with them. The neighbors didn't have electricity due to the storm and the closest friend of ours lived in the town north of us, about fifteen miles away. But he only had one spare bedroom so he could only house mom and dad. We had no relatives in this part of the country since mom and dad both left the town they grew up in when they graduated high school. They ran away together after school and somehow ended up here.
Mom called the local motel to see if they had power and surprisingly they did. She said that they only had one room available so she booked it and said that Dana and I would have to room together. We hadn't roomed together in many, many years, but we had to do it because this storm had impacted everyone is the local area. We weren't the only family in need of a place to stay.
