30 YEARS AGO TODAY...

...my hometown got blown away into prosperity!

Nobody will probably take the time to read this, but I'm gonna type it down anyway for my own good. If this kind of stuff bores you, just move on...there's plenty of entertaining stuff on the computer.

I can't let the 30th anniversary of the Bossier City Tornado pass without talking about it. This Jap guy Ted Fujita that came up with the Fujita Scale for tornadoes rated the F-4 Bossier City tornado as the strongest tornado to ever strike the US during overnight hours.

On Saturday night, Dec. 2, 1978, The (future) Mrs. and I went out on a date. She was home on the weekend from LA Tech. I don't remember where we went, or what we did, but I'm pretty sure it had something sinful connected to it.

I had bought a little house in Coleman Park on Impala Drive (yes, it was named after the car...the street next to it is Thunderbird). In those days, owning was cheaper than renting (I had paid $17,500...the payment was $88 per month...but I did have to cut the grass...that was before I was married and had a Mrs. to do it). I have few regrets in life, but one of them is selling that house.

Anyway, I got home about 11:00 on Saturday night. My faithful mutt Beauregard was waiting for me with great expectation that he would be let out to do his business. I put him out the back door and took a leak myself. I had built a make-shift darkroom in the house, and decided to go work on some film that I had shot. I was in the darkroom and heard Beauregard trying to break down the back door...slamming into it...yapping his head off, etc.

I got the prints in the stop bath and went to the back door to let the stupid mongrel in. When I opened the back door the air was as thick as I'd ever felt. I looked up, and the sky was yellow...yep, really yellow. Beauregard blasted past me, did the screeching corner turn into the hall, peeled down the hall into my bedroom, jumped up on my bed, and buried his worthless nose under the pillows. I guess I should have known something was up...but I had photos to deal with.

I was tired after I got them hung to dry. It was about 1:00 am when I turned in...after throwing Beauregard off the bed. He nervously found a place to sleep (under the bed). I guess I should have known something was up.

At about 7:00 am on Sunday morning, Dec. 3, the doorbell woke me up. I was bleary-eyed, and noticed that the telephone next to my bed was off the hook, and the receiver was lying in the floor (I found out why later on, but it's too long to tell). Then I heard "bang, bang, bang" on the door and the doorbell was getting worn out. So I dragged myself up thinking "what in the world?"

When I got to the front door it was my beloved Granddaddy (not Papaw that I have told y'all about). He told me, "A tornado has come right through town. It's wiped out everything down through where the store is and where your Mom (his daughter) and Dad live. Get some clothes on, and come with me."

I got some clothes on...scared spitless. I got in Granddaddy's station wagon. Now, Granddaddy lived way up in North Bossier, and as we headed toward our destination I wondered how he had made it to my house. Airline Drive was littered with metal, bricks, and plywood. He was just driving over all that crap in his Pontiac Station Wagon like it wasn't even there. There were cops everywhere. I asked him how he got through the roadblocks to my house.

It was a stupid question. My Granddaddy was a local businessman, and also the world's greatest BS artist. He knew just about all the cops on the force, and could talk his way out of (and into) just about anything.

So we got to the intersection of Old Minden Road (the street my parents lived on) and Airline Drive. It was completely blocked by big old National Guard guys with rifles that didn't know Granddaddy. We were told that only residents could pass.

So, it fell to me to be the BS artist. Fortunately I had not changed the address on my drivers license after moving from home. I pulled it out and showed it to GI Joe. I told him that I got caught out partying when the storm hit and really needed to get home to check on my folks. He let me and Granddaddy pass through the barricade (on foot...so we parked his Wagon at the Pak-A-Sack and hoofed it).

As we walked down Old Minden Road I saw every utlity pole sheared off about 5 feet from the ground with electric lines intact. I was expecting the worst. It was just a short walk from Airline Drive to the house. When Grandadday and I got there we gingerly stepped over electric lines and walked up the driveway. Daddy was there, sitting on the front steps with a big smile on his face. I guess he knew that we would find him.

I have never been so glad to see my Daddy in my life! The house had about two shingles missing. Everything else was fine. I still wonder to this day how a tornado can break every utility pole on a street and leave every house untouched.

Daddy told us that he woke up and realized the power was off, but didn't think anything about it. He got up and took Honey (their worthless, yapping chihuhua/poodle mix) out to do her business. He went out the back door so he didn't see the utility poles laying in his front yard. But he knew right away something was wrong. From our back yard you could see the "Don Drive-In Theater." It was gone.

I guess that was enough to get Daddy to start looking around, and he realized that he was trapped by utility poles, power lines, and lack of communication with the outside world. So he did the best thing he could...sit down on the front porch and wait for kin to arrive. Well, Momma was kinda testy because there wasn't any way to make coffee, but all in all she was okay.

We decided to try to walk down to the store. My Granddaddy & Daddy owned an Appliance & TV store (that's where I worked...no nepotism involved at all there). That was back in the days when you bought appliances and TVs from the local guy that you knew. So Daddy grabbed all the ID he could find and we headed off on the 1/2 mile or so trek.

The further we went the worse it got. There was debris everywhere. We got to where Sports World used to be, and found that Sports World was not to be...it was gone (actually, shoes from Sports World were found 30 miles away in the woods near Minden, LA with the tags still on them).

Then we passed by the Port Au Prince, a two story apartment complex that only had one story left. Then we passed by a restaurant on the corner of Old Minden and Benton Road...well it was a restaurant...

We were expecting the worst. About 200 yards north we strode into the parking lot of Will's Appliances at 450 Benton Rd. About two shingles were missing. Daddy unlocked the door and we walked in. The dadgummed alarm went off! There was still power at the store!!!

Daddy has always lived right!

We turned the alarm off and walked back to the house. Momma & Daddy collected up some clothes and we walked back to Granddaddy's Pontiac Station Wagon and headed north to his house.

I wish that I could describe what I saw in the aftermath of that tornado in a way that would be worth trying. As we drove north on Airline Drive past what once was The Don Drive-In Theater I saw a blood red drop-top ElDorado hanging about 15 feet above ground, wrapped around a utility pole. The Pizza Hut was just a P Hut, and the liquor store across the street wasn't very "Thrifty."

You always hear people describing tornado devastation like a "war zone." I've never been in a war zone, but I guess that is as good a way to describe it as any. We had to stop for a cop barricade, and I jumped out of the Wagon while Granddaddy was BS-ing his way through it. We were right by what used to be the Don Drive-In Theater. I just had to go look. That was where The Mrs. took my innocence...I just had to go look.

I walked through the debris, and saw several 4" steel speaker mounts twisted like pretzels. A few of them were twisted like horseshoes...all the way to the ground. Granddaddy started hollering at me to get in the car so I did. We weaved our way to his comfortable, safe, loving house in North Bossier. I really don't remember how I got home. But I did check on The (future) Mrs. She lived about 300 yards from The Don Drive-In theater. They were all okay and lived to tell their own stories.

I would swear on a stack of Good Books that what I saw really made me realize just how insignificant, and how powerless I am as a human.

Well, The Don Drive-In Theater became a shopping Mall that attracted like a gozillion dollars worth of revenue to Bossier. The tornado wiped out a bunch of ugly, cruddy buildings. The city rebuilt and became a haven for "white flight" Shreveporters. It is too long a story to tell y'all how Bossier City made lemonade out of limes...but trust me...my little town that was devastated truly made the most of a catastrophe.

Our local outhouse wiping paper, The Times of Shreveport (which just cut 22 jobs by the way due to the fact that they are ignorant and irrelevant) ran an article about the Bossier City Tornado.