It was a pleasant early evening in the middle of summer, about a half-hour before sundown. I was nine years old, tossing paper airplanes in the circle of our cul-de-sac on the south side of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and the sky suddenly got very angry.
The day was July 15, 1980.
Clouds churned and boiled as they gobbled up the sun and a chill wind cut through the warm day. The sky took on a sickly yellowish-green. A dark pall drew over what had been the end of a sunny day.
And I tossed paper airplanes in the air.
The wail of a siren rose to full pitch, swinging in and out of volume.
I flew my little folded planes.
“Jimmy! Get inside!” My mom leaned out the front door, her voice pressed thin against the peal of siren and the hissing static of leaves blowing in the stiff wind.
I turned to her wearing a very clear and definitive look of, “Huh?”
She dashed out the door and fast-stepped down the sidewalk, emphatically jabbing a finger at the ground. “You get over here right now! Get inside!”
As the sky turned into roiling pea soup, I was hustled into the house by my mother and greeted by the TV bleating an emergency alert system, followed by a distorted human voice telling us to take cover in a basement or doorway and to stay away from windows. My mother looked very worried.
I was nine years old. I was too stupid to be worried. Besides, my father didn’t seem too concerned. Myself, my 16-year-old brother, Bob, and my parents hung around the kitchen table and watched as the scene outside the kitchen patio door turned black as night. The winds rose to a gale force scream, bending the tall pines at the end of our yard almost horizontal. Finally, with one quick wink, the power went out and everything went dark.
My father said, “Let’s get downstairs.”
That’s when I got scared.
What for the longest time many of us referred to as The July 15th Tornado is now called The July 15th Derecho. This, to me, is the equivalent to Pluto losing its planetary status. But, regardless of what you call the storm of 1980, its 112 mile-an-hour straight line winds caused considerable devastation and one unfortunate casualty.
There should have been two casualties, actually, but somehow my father, a man who would shake a fist against the very wrath of God, survived stepping out the basement door and into one-hundred-plus mile-an-hour winds and pelting rain to fetch our patio umbrella that had blown off our upper deck and down the hill into the neighbor’s yard. For an unbearably long 120 seconds, I was certain my father had blown away while my brother and I sat next to my bawling mother.
At one point, my sister—who was working late at an office in the Old Mill Center on the west side of town—called us from under a desk, alone and terrified. She would emerge after the storm to find buildings next to hers flattened.
On the morning of Wednesday, July 16th, we emerged from our house on City View Drive to find debris everywhere. I don’t remember many trees down in our neighborhood, but where once our vista to the north had been mostly blocked by the trees of Putnam Park, now we could clearly see downtown miles away. Neighbors stepped out to survey their property and gathered to check on one another, share stories and discuss damage. The sun shone bright in an absurdly blue sky over an unreal calmness and quiet.
I walked for blocks, witnessing uprooted trees that tented the concrete of sidewalks or fell into homes. What I didn’t see at the time was the far more catastrophic damage done to many parts of the town. Entire homes destroyed. Compared to others, our area of town was lucky.
I ended up at Rudolf Road.There was a small home on a corner lot with a large front yard strewn with downed trees and tree branches. I watched a man picking up and piling the branches. Being the young entrepreneur I was, I saw this as a great opportunity to make a few bucks and I started to help. For about twenty minutes, without a word spoken, I diligently gathered branch after branch, piling them up, until we had cleared all but the biggest branches from his yard.
“That about does it,” I said, dusting off the profitable generosity from my hands and ready to receive the five or ten dollars of gratitude.
“Thanks, kid,” he said and headed off to start cutting the large tree limbs remaining.
At nine years old, I had just learned a hard lesson about negotiating cost of services before performing them. I resumed my surveyance of the devastation, head downcast and kicking at stones with a poor dejected sneaker. Over time, though, whenever I reflected back to that moment, I found myself feeling good about what I had done despite no tangible return on my efforts. A more important lesson was learned—about good deeds being their own reward.
For approximately one week, we were without power. For the first day, my father insisted we know exactly what we wanted in the refrigerator and where to find it before opening the door. If we spent more than 2 seconds with door open, he would immediately cry out, “Shut that damn door! You’re letting all the cold out!”
But, after that first day, it was clear additional steps needed to be taken. Perishables were put into coolers with ice, but ice started to be in short supply. In the end, little could be saved. Meanwhile, we pined over the half-dozen channels on the TV we couldn’t watch, and the Atari game system we couldn’t play.
But mostly, we just continued to live. We kids rode our bikes, shot hoops, flew our kites and otherwise played outside like we always did. Adults got together and shot the shit and hit the golf course and played cards like they always did. Meals cooked over hot coals and hot days cooled in the shade. The days lolled by and we almost forgot about those electrons flowing through wires to magically bring life to a little 19-inch entertainment box and the luxury of air conditioning and refrigerated food.
When the power returned, there was rejoicing, but it was fleeting. We watched some TV, we enjoyed the indecisiveness of visiting the refrigerator without any idea what we wanted. With joystick in hand, we moved some pixels around on a little screen and shot pixels at other moving pixels. But mostly, our living wasn’t much different from when the power had been out.
Forty-four years later, and I think about when the power goes out for just a few hours and how much it disrupts my life. How frustrated I get. And that’s while still having access to all the worst things happening around the world right in the palm of my hand.
However, after ten minutes or so without power, I do start to get a little nostalgic. I think back to those days after the Storm of 1980 when a few simple comforts and all the distractions were taken away from us.
When all we were left with were each other and a simpler life.
…
There’s a great article by Volume One about the storm you can find here:
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