Journal: Tornadoes, Wolves, & the Civil War

 

Last Monday evening while it rained, lightninged, and thundered, the sun got low enough in the sky to drop beneath the heavy cover of clouds, giving everything an eerie dark orange glow.

Meanwhile, the tornado I mentioned and posted pictures of in last week’s journal sat nearly stationary, almost unmoving, for around 45 minutes!  Practically unheard of, especially here in windswept Nebraska.  It just sat there, growing bigger... and bigger.  Reckon it was drilling a well for some farmer out there?  😆

This was near the village of Wellfleet, Nebraska, population 69, located 32 miles south of North Platte, a couple hundred miles to our west.

Fortunately, there are more tumbleweeds than humanity there.  Can you see the rainbow to the left of the tornado?  A few times, lightning bolts shot right down through the middle of the funnel.  And the rainbow turned into a double rainbow, arching on both sides of the tornado.

Storm chasers were exhilarated to be getting such good pictures and videos of such a textbook tornado, while not having to worry excessively about people getting injured or property being demolished.

No work in the gardens Tuesday morning, as it was rainy and windy.  I tidied the kitchen, then headed upstairs to my quilting studio.

There are bunnies all over the place this year.  There are three out in the front yard frolicking away (one is much bigger, probably the mother) – and a purple martin is dive-bombing them!  I hunted for a picture to go with that story, and found this:  Robin dive-bombs Bunny

Since it made me laugh, I promptly sent the link to several of the grandchildren.

“I didn’t think birds would have a problem with bunnies, lol!” Hester wrote back.

“I know!” I agreed.  “After all, the Bible doesn’t add to the ‘lion and lamb’ verses, ‘...and the American robins will make peace with the cottontail rabbits!’”

There were a couple of baby squirrels on the deck that afternoon.  Cute little things.  A blue jay landed near them, and they skedaddled.  He was bigger than they are!

Rain was predicted again Wednesday morning, so I quilted late Tuesday, and didn’t get up early to work outside – but I should’ve, because it didn’t rain (or at least not much).  It was overcast and the temperature was very nice.  The next few days were going to be quite hot.  It got up to 99° Thursday, and the heat index was near 110°. 

 Ah, well.  More quilting!

By Thursday evening, I was quilting the bottom half of the Wolves’ Dream Catcher quilt.  There were four wide borders and two narrow borders to go.

Bobby and Hannah have been on a vacation to Washington, D.C., visiting friends and seeing the sights.  Friday, I got a text from Levi:  “Look, look!  I found a big pointy stick!”

 It was the Washington Monument.

Later, Hannah sent me a picture of Levi texting – and smiling down at his phone as he did so.  He was either pleased with himself for being so clever, or pleased with Grandma’s  response!  😉

For supper that evening, I fixed breaded, baked fish, diced potatoes and onions with a butter sauce, and corn on the cob.  We had peach-mango juice with it.

That night as I quilted, I was listening to (and periodically watching) a live stream by Meteorologist ‘Ryan Hall, Y’all’, and he in turn had live streams of several storm chasers in the margins of his main video.  They were livestreaming weather in North Dakota. 

There were tornadoes all around my cousin Tracy’s farm in Cass County, including a large, dangerous one that wiped out a number of homes near the small town of Enderlin, also in Cass County, killing three people.  I saw one of the storm chasers pull into an area where houses were totally demolished, right after it happened.  He was still in the rear flanks of that tornado when he jumped out of his vehicle and went running to see if anybody needed help – and found the first two people.  The third person was found nearby a little later, where another home had been destroyed.  

This is what used to be the home of Marcario and Roberta Lucio.  Marc, 88, died in the tornado.  Roberta was not home that night; she was in town for a family reunion.  Marc was a painter.  Roberta is a quilter.  People who have been helping clean up after the storm have found some salvageable paintings – including one up in a tree – and quite a number of quilts.

Michael and Katherine Dehn, both 73, died at their home, which was about a mile east of Enderlin on Highway 46. 

The Enderlin tornado started southeast of the city and traveled north.  It destroyed several homes, farm buildings, power lines, and a cellphone tower.  It also threw more than 30 train cars, each weighing over 35 tons, off the tracks about 3 miles southeast of Enderlin.

Tracy and her husband Mike were at Big Floyd Lake (that’s just north of Detroit Lakes) where they have a cabin, but their 18-year-old son Brody was home.  They headed for home as soon as they realized what the weather was turning into.  It was frightening, because tornadoes and a derecho with winds over 100 mph were headed toward them, too.  Big Floyd Lake is about 150 east of their home.

Brody slept through that storm!

They have a large farm, with lots of grain bins, barns, and big machinery.  Their tractors and combines are all right, but there are demolished and damaged grain bins, two ruined pivots, and a destroyed grain handling system including the leg (also known as a bucket elevator), auger, and other components.  Some bins were wrenched from their cement platforms; those huge bolts that hold them just sheered loose.  There were also numerous big trees, including the apple tree that was over 100 years old, that fell or were broken. 

The temperature made it to 90° well before noon Saturday, on its way up to 97°.  The wind was gusting up to 40 mph.  

I stayed indoors, drank cold brew coffee (I had both Cookie Doodle and Caramel Macchiato flavors to choose from!  Mmmmm...), and quilted.

As you know, I just had my machine tuned up and retimed – but I wasn’t even a third of the way through this quilt, doing some thread painting, when the machine made a strange noise (sort of like the bobbin spinning the wrong way), and it has sounded bad ever since, and puts a slight bur on the needle after half a row of quilting.  I was handling that machine with kid gloves, I thought!  I didn’t hit a seam... didn’t hit a ruler... just reversed direction, and not violently, either.  I’m thinking the bobbin race is probably worn from so much use, and might need to be replaced.  Let’s hope I can finish this quilt, and a baby quilt a friend needs me to do!

Here are the last three of the six wolves on this quilt.  Can you see the ‘thread painting’ I did on their fur?

Levi and Hannah both sent pictures that day as they explored around Gettysburg.

“Look, look!” wrote Levi.  “This is the inside of a cannon barrel at Gettysburg!”

The photo showed a wasp nest with active wasps in and on it.

Levi informed me, “I’ve never run so fast in my life as when I saw one of them fly out of the cannon after I pulled the camera away.”

“Yikes,” I answered.  “I get carried away when I’m taking closeups of them, then when I pull the camera away, I find myself nose to nose with them!  Eeeeeek!!!”

“I ran so fast I started to leave a vapor trail, like subsonic aircraft,” said Levi.  😆

This is a screengrab from Ring doorbell footage of the tornado that hit near Elderin, North Dakota.  A preliminary estimate from the National Weather Service rated the tornado as an EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with wind gusts hitting between 136 and 165 mph.

Here’s Levi’s shot of the Washington Monument.  

He sent a picture of Cemetery Hill, where Pickett’s Charge hit the union lines, and gave me a few details about it:  “They advanced from the tree line under heavy fire, then at about 600 yards out, started marching double-step.  200 yards out they started the full charge.  It was July 3, 1863.  So many monuments!  They line the roads for miles.”

“Pickett was sent by Robert E. Lee, right?” I asked.  “And the charge failed, right?”

“Yep.  All correct,” Levi assured me.

He sent another photo:  “This is one of the eight walls of books at the Library of Congress.”  

And another:  “Here’s this wonder.  Only happened once that we know of, in history – fused bullets that hit in midair.”

“Wow,” said I.  “I’ve sliced an arrow right down through the shaft of a previously-shot arrow.  Does that count?  Make me famous, or anything?”

“William Tells me you aren’t named Robin,” answered Levi, who is fond of puns.  “I suppose not.”  😅

A few minutes later, he texted, “We’re about to turn onto Seminary Ridge.”

Always helpful, I responded, “Here are the coordinates, so you know when you get there:  39.8257° N, 77.2464° W.”  😁

After a bit, Levi gave me more information, along with a picture:  “Union troops fell back to here after their lines were broken, after the first assault on McPherson Ridge, on the first of July.  The lines broke again, after a second frontal assault by a much larger Confederate force.  They retreated again, to Cemetery Hill, where they set a line to the Little Round Top.  They held it, more or less, until the end of the battle.”

“Do you know the roads to Gettysburg are like spokes?” I then asked him, sending this map.

“Yes!” answered Levi.  “They said it was a good place to fight, because the roads are easy to move troops on.”  Then he added, “Gutzon Borglum made some of the bronze statues.”

{Gutzon Borglum (born March 25, 1867, St. Charles, Bear Lake, Idaho, U.S.; died March 6, 1941, Chicago, Illinois) was the American sculptor who is best known for his colossal sculpture of the faces of four U.S. presidents on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.}

A while later, I told him (Levi, that is; not Gutzon), “I’ve found some audiobooks on the Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg.  I’ll listen to them while I’m quilting, and then we can tell each other a thang or two, and we’ll know what the other is going on about.”  😄

Levi is fun to talk with!

“Just think,” I commented a few minutes later, “the country hadn’t even been an independent nation for 100 years before the Civil War broke out.  Arthur W. Pink (one of our favorite Biblical commentators) said, “War is a terrible thing for any peoples, regardless of which side they are on.”

The wind had not died down at all by suppertime; it was still blowing gusts up to 40 mph.  The trees were whipping around, and I could hear things rattling and thumping.  I fixed a broccoli-cheese-egg quiche, specifically to put some leftover potatoes and onions into – and forgot to add the potatoes and onions.  Oh, well.  They’ll save another day.

Here are Aaron, Levi, Nathanael, and Joanna; Hannah took the picture.

I sent Amy some pictures of Lyle’s quilt, telling her, “I have about a row and a half to go, and the quilting will be done.”

Lyle is Teddy and Amy’s third child.

This is quite a large quilt.  I told Amy, “If you ever want me to wash any of the quilts I’ve given the kids, I can do that.”

She replied, “Warren’s is on his bed right now.  (His is the Farmall Scenes quilt.)  But it’s upside down so that the top doesn’t get dirty.  😉”

“That’s funny,” I answered.  “When Aunt Lorraine (my father-in-law Lyle’s youngest sister) was a little girl playing on the farm, if her dress got dirty, she’d go behind the barn, take it off, turn it wrong side out, and put it back on.  Voilà!  Clean dress!  (’Course now her epidermis was dirty, but... oh, well.)”

These are the train cars that were thrown from the track in North Dakota.  Look at that one that got tossed like a tin can way out in the middle of that field.  Mind you, these cars were all connected to each other.

I hear thunder!  Accu-Weather tells me it’s already raining; but what do they know.  There’s a chance it will be raining in an hour and a half or so, and a bigger chance it will rain off and on throughout the night. 

If it’s not raining in the morning, I will do some gardening, as the temperature will be nice, and pulling weeds is easier after a rain.

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn           ,,,>^..^<,,,