Opinion : How many ways can you say, \"Wow!\"

Yesterday we woke at 4:30 to the sound of thunder, flashes of lightning, and a really loud roaring noise.

This is one time I hate living in the country. Usually the night before I will check the weather, and see if anything serious is headed our way so I can stay awake all night, watch the radar and bite my nails.

Last night I forgot to do that.

I woke up, and could hear one of the tiny kittens crying because it was scared, and that was over the sound of the wind and rain.

Shortly after, our power went out so the search for my cell phone started, not that it's good for much since we rarely have reception, but it makes a great flashlight.

I saw that our daughter had tried to call, and of course I couldn't get a signal to call her back so we left messages for each other when we could.

I've gotten so used to worrying like crazy and nothing happening so I figured it would be just a thunderstorm.

But when you're up at 5 in the morning, the power's out, and you have nothing else to do, you hop in the car and head out to see what all the fuss is about.

The first sign that it was bad was a tree in the road. On our road, that still isn't a huge indication that it's real serious, it usually just means we have oodles and oodles of old trees along the road and when the wind blows, we're bound to have one land in the road.

We cut across country roads weaving our way toward town, and saw the corn laying down in the fields, and knew that wasn't good.

We saw an old barn down, but thought the same happened as it did to the old trees. Then we started to see more buildings down. As we got onto the highway it still didn't look too bad until we got to "Hummel's Corner", the curve by the airport, we saw the tops blown off a silo, roof damage, then we saw a house flattened that was in the process of being torn down and our hearts started to sink.

Our biggest concern was our daughter and grandbabies, well okay, the son in law too :) As we neared Vinton, we neared the "High Road", or the first bridge into town, it looked like a huge lawn mower had gone through and topped all of the trees off. We saw poles broken in half and balancing upright with just slivers of wood. The closer we got, the more my heart sank.

My first thought is, "We JUST recovered, mostly, from the flood and now this???"

The old building next to the bridge, had it's roof partially torn off, we went down town where we saw windows blown out of the upstairs apartments, roofs peeled off like a can of sardines, chunks of walls gone, and everywhere you looked there were trees and power lines down.

It was an eerie sea of green.

All I could say, is "Wow. WOW. Look at that...wow..."

The ultimate site was probably the site of the top of the Braille School or Kiwanis Park strewn with debris, or Theisen's or Pizza Hut, or the power lines creating a bridge over 218, or...

But the thing that made me smile, was the longer we were in town, the more folks we saw quietly surveying the damage and grabbing limbs and moving them out of the way.

We saw neighbors crawling out from under the massive forest, and talking and laughing as they looked at each other's damage, shaking their head and then begin to help one another.

And I thought, "THIS is Vinton!"

We hurried, well as fast as one can in impassable streets, to bring the kids back in to lend a hand.

We returned, took care of the daughter's place, who fortunately didn't have the severe damage many others had, just enough wind to relocate her central air unit, damage the roof, blow windows out and shook her house so badly the plaster is falling down inside, but the important things were fine, the babies and the parents.

After the yard was cleaned up, the girls started clearing the street with their dad, while I fanned babies and mom and I made plans for the day and evening. We both worried about our babies. She wondered how to keep hers cool and relatively happy, and I, how to get mine to boot up and load to the internet without power.

While everyone knows the damage is so huge, the losses so great, they also know there are worse things.

The relief of counting noses in your own house, checking on your friends and relatives, then seeing that the neighbors are safe and sound kind of dulls the shock of the storm.

But the thing that never changes, is Vinton. Vinton is more than the name of a town, it's a word that sums up a group of people living in the same geographical area that are there for each other.

For anyone out there listening, I think we've proven that we can stick together through thick and thin. We survive floods, and near tornado conditions.

Now can we get a break for, oh, let's say another century, and just have the run of the mill, boring sort of weather?