One night, when I was home with my Momma and Daddy, Momma came into my bedroom and woke me up.

"Hurry and get dressed, Punkin.   We have to go down to Grandma's."

I could hear wind roaring outside and it was raining very hard and lightening and thundering.

Daddy had the car ready to go when Momma and I ran from the house.   It was hard for me to run because I was trying to plug my ears so I wouldn't hear the thunder.   It felt like the wind was going to pick me right up and Momma held my hand very tightly.

As we drove down the road to Grandma's, branches from trees were falling in front of the car.   Daddy had to drive very carefully and had to get out of the car a couple of times to drag big branches out of the way.   The car shook from the big wind.

When we got to Grandma's, Grandma picked me up and carried me into the hatchery.   Momma had to help Daddy try and get the big barn door shut.   It was standing almost straight out from the barn and they had to pull it down and fasten it off with a rope.

The electricity had gone off so Momma, Daddy, and Grandma had to sit in back of the incubators and turn big wheels to keep the heat going to the incubators so the eggs wouldn't die.   I slept on the chicken-sorting table.

The next morning, after the power came back on, we went up the road to see if Great Grandma and Uncle Ray were all right.   None of their barns had blown down, but the next farm up the road had their barn blown down on top of all their cows.

It had been a tornado, or a cyclone as people called it back then.   It had come right down our road, but just before it got to our farm, it jumped one-half mile over to the south.   We were very lucky because many people were blown out of their houses and some died.

No one knew the tornado was coming because we all were sleeping.   In one family, the Daddy heard the storm and ran into his little boy's bedroom.   He jumped on top of the little boy's bed and held onto the mattress.

That tornado blew that mattress right out of the house and landed it in the yard, but the Daddy and the little boy didn't even get hurt.

For years afterwards, when we drove up the road, we could see foundations where houses, barns and schools had blown away.