Rainbows of toys and books lined the best bedroom ever (except for any other kid I visited) where out a strip of windows I'd thrill-watch the sky racing gray, dark pink, and that green it's never supposed to be when clouds devoured the day. Everybody scrammed under their roofs save for lucky old cusses answering to nobody.

     Studying the fracas I'd be stopped to collect Clyde, my Rat Terrier-mutt and fan-club president off the patio. Into position between my knees in our sardine-can tub against the wall of the cracker-box bathroom clogged by Winston's and Viceroy's dense clouds like I'd manufacture kicking in combat boots and cussing like a sailor scant years later thinking myself a sophisticate the squat dog, nails sliding on the porcelain, would go.

     Walking in the necessary room of our 1960's Sears and Roebuck kit-house on smoke-steeped low-pile wall-to-wall once I splashed like I was out to drown it, I made my poor pop his customary dealing-with-my-hi-jinx tomato-colored over a spray of mushrooms I grew in the corner by our bath. Sweeping me up from valuable TV examinations/comic book studies to survey my farm I was by-God fascinated, wondering how they tasted.

     Blaring from a bombastically brown central living room swapped out percussively pink when Dad cancelled his own life a decade down the line from Soundesign speakers sized like middle school basketball stars came Watches then Warnings. Held by me alone was flush excitement, convinced "The Tornado" was a lone entity, a celebrity gadding about hitting another locale on the daily. Watches concluded weather was the kind he/she/they were inclined to make the scene during: Warnings meant go! time myself assured theyd blow into Lone Oak - for my money Paducah's Most Interesting Suburb (Store slogan swiped from our late Party Mart, earning that title like a merit badge with wall-pieces having old witch faces that spit at customers, chocolate penises on lollipop sticks, and wine coolers teams of Lone Oak High Scholars vomited after Homecoming. Hannan Plaza seemed like a widow without it sitting in the corner. R.I.P. P.M.)

     Regularly I dreamt of The Tornado with windows upchucking glass fragmentation partnering loud train whistles like the ones that sung me asleep on the twin bed in the spare room at Mammy and Pa-Pa's where my uncles slept as boys. That was where I bunked past Dad kibosh-ing me sleeping with Mammy in the big bed which kicked her feelings since she loved lying beside her grand-kids chain smoking, swapping stories, sipping coffee, and making fun of Pa-Pa. Heaven knows I preferred it two-to-one over breathing personally but Dad was convinced it was "ruining me" so he halted it at grandma alternate Mee-Mee's place too (I'm convinced she only wanted a weary victim to submerge in that dreadful Vicks Vapo-Rub). Dream-wise I'd awaken and what next? How they blabbed about That Tornado, it must be spectacular.

     Excitement was my enticement and if you asked me, people griped about the coolest crap. Take glasses - Halloween masks somebody can wear every day but all the people I ever met lucky enough to make that score wanted out. I begged to no dice - 20/20 eyesight they said. Next was braces - METAL TEETH! Straight out of DC Comics and James Bond, so naturally I was cursed with the best chompers in my family said Doc Abell, that quack. Standing out was my mission and all I could trademark was FAT. Girls complained about receiving the shaft but any fool could see they made out like bandits in the clothes department plus they grew into teachers. My logic was The Tornado must be the living end if this many are dreading it this much.

     Via Greyhound Bus our family headed to Anadarko, Oklahoma one Summer and I sat next to a biker with long hair, muscles, and no sleeves named Garth I REALLY liked. Weird, my cousins Kellie and Kim liked him too and I'm thinking we all did alike as they did Donny Osmond but I was all about Marie.

     For me the best part of our trip was a colossal storm I watched roar down the plains toward Mammy's sister Thelma's farmland. Clouds for miles ran fast as those kids playing ball to my bottomless disinterest, weaving dark Apache sky magic. Mama's cousin Gene, an honest-to-Betsy cowboy brought the drama hollering "Its coming - a twister! Everybody in the cellar NOW!" so maybe 15 of us crammed into a subterranean jelly-shed. Despite my love of a good circus I wanted up-top to see the star of the show absent from the scene. STOOD UP AGAIN!

     Moon rising back on our Old Kentucky Home sitting in Mammy's nicotine-coated corner rocker alone taking in "Wonderful World of Disney", I saw an antique story about a country kid and his Golden Retriever called " Old Yeller" (The tune goes "Old Yeller, come back Yeller, best doggone dog in the West..."). Likely 10 carriers of my DNA or folks they married like Aunt Paula who I couldnt believe was that beautiful when at age three she entered my personal network asked what was on, observed, and gave this movie a strong review. None chose to sit by until the end, offer a gentle notice, or anything but head to the head and head out. For the uninitiated, this flick ends with a bang.

     After the Technicolor snuff-film Uncle Walt showed us tykes a cartoon about Pecos Bill and his enthusiastic lady-friend Cyclone Sue both of whom got grabbed by The Tornado in Texas then they weren't seen nor heard from again by anyone who knew them. They were lost, like I was once at Midtown's Wonder Market which had a ginormous metal star atop its parking lot sign I'd hassle Mom into driving me to check out a couple of nights a week. Dad was making a living doing shift work at Union Carbide, a nuclear power plant like Homer Simpson but sad our 1970's government processed Plutonium through illegally, giving hundreds cancer while Mom showed me stars before supermarkets and sometimes Holiday Inn.

     While she shopped undoubtedly I daydreamed out of her orbit and upon landing back beneath fluorescence between bas-karts for the first time ever no one I recognized was visible, only strangers. I paced the aisle end-caps looking down them a hundred feet, so far from the home I now wanted to be with my parents worse than anything. I didn't care if I got anything today be it comic book or candy, right now measured no sense to whats been before which was all I knew and that made me cry out for my mother, running roughshod without knowledge of homing in or moving further. Tears, mucous, and screams in short order before a housewife picked up something unexpected, deviating from her list, delivering it to another minutes later. My long-haired, blue eyed, barely-more-than-a-daughter-herself Mom's safe and tight arms didn't stop my meltdown coming from the new detail of life - I could become lost and alone.

     To Hell with The Tornado I decided in the Full-Flavor rocker that Sunday night.

     

     Fifty years plus thousands of cigarettes and stories later with Mammy's youngest, Regina, a '70's grocery store afternoon reverberated from the prison wall-phone calling about my beautiful mother, hearing "Todd, she's gone".