Originally published on Facebook

by Blane Mather on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 10:57am

I just learned of the tornado that touched down in Eagle, Wisconsin last night, and of the storms that left 48,000 customers in Waukesha and surrounding counties without power.

A CNN Report On The Tornado

A Video Report From WISN-TV

It bothered me terribly to read that a warning siren failed to function in Eagle. Authorities confirmed there were no fatalities, and for that bit of luck we can all be grateful. But stumbling across some forum postings from Wisconsin residents about the event gave me cause to remember the experiences of my youth, when for a period of time tornadoes were a part of the every day reality of my existence.

Tornado Memories

For 3 years (from around 1966 to 1968) my family lived in Oconomowoc, WI. We lived on North Walnut Street, and right across the street was Fowler Lake ... I could literally cross the street, take 5 steps and go fishing.

Here's a map showing the location we lived at in Oconomowoc between East Pleasant Avenue and North Oakwood Avenue on North Walnut Street:

GOOGLE MAP showing North Walnut Street in Oconomowoc, WI

The lake was a known formation point for tornadoes -- there's something about the combination of an open body of water and a low altitude depression that encourages the damn things. Typically we would have at least three tornado alerts each summer where the "air raid" sirens would go off and my mom would freak out about where us kids were and hustle us into the basement.

And we would huddle up holding close to the northeast wall because that was where the experts said we would be safest. And I remember learning at that young age the feeling that the only thing that was really keeping us safe was dumb luck ... the luck that drove all the twisters that did touch down to head anywhere but at our house.

We'd sit there in the basement, with my mom having a flashlight and radio in hand, waiting for the all clear. We didn't talk much, we didn't play or do anything else to entertain ourselves. We just mostly sat there silently listening to the news reports on the radio with our imaginations going wild about what might be going on out there and waiting to see if we would hear that deadly freight train sound. And every time there was a lightning strike nearby, that old AM Radio would suddenly sharply crackle with the interference.

We'd wait ... and sometimes 15 minutes later, sometimes up to an hour later, we would either hear the sirens sound the all clear or it would be announced on the radio that it was clear. But it wasn't really all clear until Mom announced we could go upstairs.

My brother Kyle probably remembers this. My sister Tania may ... she would have been about 4 when we moved away from there.

After living under those conditions for three years, my mother convinced my father to move to a new home 15 miles southwest of Waukesha, in a subdivision placed on one of the highest elevations in the county. And because it was a high elevation, regardless of what other extreme weather conditions we had to deal with there, we never again had to worry about tornadoes. I can't tell you how many microwaves, vcr's, tv's and heating furnaces (!) my parents have had to replace due to extreme lightning strikes since living there, but that's another story.

To give you an idea of how profoundly that 3 years of living in Oconomowoc and waiting for those inevitable hours of terror every summer have affected me, think about this:

I have lived in Texas for 12 years, and in Houston for the last 10 of that. And it still freaks me out that none of the homes here are built with basements. Logically, I know there's good reason for that ... because the heightened risk of flooding here makes them impractical. But the fact that none of the places I've lived at while I'm here have had basements has made me feel, in spite of all logic, just a little less safe.