For the remainder of fifth grade after the tornado, I continued to go cold and clammy every time dark clouds lined the sky. It seemed the entire year had more than its share of violent storms. Many of them took place in the night. I don’t know if this is a common problem for others, but when I am suddenly awakened from a sound sleep after midnight and forced to get up, I get horrible stomach cramps and have an urge to throw up anything I may have eaten. It takes a while for the pain to let up. I still have that problem, but now it isn’t likely to happen unless the phone rings in the night.

When I was ten, my dad must have been suffering from PTSD too, because every time he heard thunder, he felt he had to get Mom and me out of bed and insist we get dressed.

My dad kept having us get in the car and go to my grandparents’ house. For several months, they too were awakened by the thunder and lightning. However, after a few times of arousing them from a sound sleep, he realized they weren’t so young anymore, and he felt bad for disturbing them. There was an alternative to bothering them.

I’m sure those of you who have been following my story might remember our neighbor, Joe Seay, the good hearted but simple-minded old man who kept us supplied with freshly dug peanuts and wormy apples. He was also the one who had married Vergie, the 500 lb. lady with multiple personality disorder. He and Vergie were also victims of the tornado. His loss from the storm was only some trees and his roof top but he and Vergie were badly frightened.

Joe was the stereotypical person reporters always find to interview after a storm. Now, they look for someone in a trailor park, but this was before those were popular. I’m not kidding, when I tell you Joe’s version of the Feb. 13th tornado in Newton was the one that went out all over the US. Our relatives in Texas heard Joe telling how he saw it coming, and he and he and his wife got on the floor and tried to pull the mattress over their heads. I couldln't imagine how Vergie managed to get on the floor. Those out-of-town reporters seem to have a nose for sniffing out someone simple like Joe to be the spokesman when a disaster occurs.

Joe took the storm seriously, and with the tarp still covering what was left of his tin roof, he started digging a new pit in the side of an embankment beside the road. He’d hoped to make it large enough to save everyone within a half mile of his shack if there should be another tornado.

Joe had issued us an invitation as he probably had to those in every house between us and town. “Ya’ll need to come on over and see my new storm pit. It’s plenty big enough for everybody. We’ll be able to keep y’all safe from the next tornado.”

I don’t know if anyone else ever checked out Joe’s pit, but one stormy night, Dad passed up my grandparents' place and stopped  our car beside the new pit. From the partially cracked doorway letting in fresh air, we could see it was lit with lanterns, and someone was inside of it.

Thunder was rumbling in the distance along with jagged streaks of lightning, but the rain had not yet started. Mom, Dad and I got out of the car to go inspect Joe’s new creation. At least, this new shelter shouldn’t be full of snakes and spiders. We soon found out Joe had exaggerated its size. With a full bed inside there wasn’t a lot of space left. The bed contained Virgie in her granny gown and Joe hanging off the other side in his underwear. I gasped in shock. This was more than I was expecting to see.

“Ya’ll, come on in. Theres a plenty of room.  It looks like we are liable to get us a bad blow after a while.”

“Joe,” my daddy told him. “You’ve done a fine job on this, but we’ll just sit out here in the car unless, we see a tornado coming. We don’t want to interrupt you and your wife’s sleeping. Ya’ll go on back to bed. We’ll be fine out here.”

Joe and Virgie continued to sleep in their pit most nights, but as for my dad, his PTSD seemed to have improved. I don’t remember us having to make any pit stops after that night.

When school started up again in August, I was once again in Miss Nicholson’s class. She was still having her temper fits and wanting to ‘peel and pepper’ us when we got out of line. Someone must have said something, because she wasn’t mentioning ‘sliding us down the razorblade” any more.

Like all of the elementary teachers, she was required to have her class perform a play in the auditorium. It certainly wasn’t something she looked forward to doing, because she didn’t like her classes disrupted for play practice. She announced we would be doing The Golden Goose.

This tale involves three brothers. The youngest was considered stupid. The first two went into the woods to cut trees, and an old man asked each of them to share their lunches, but each in turn refused to share. As a result of being selfish, they were both punished by being hurt with the ax. The third son begged to go and cut down the trees and his father told him he was too dumb, and he would get hurt as well. He went anyway, but when the old man asked to share his meal, he shared it willingly. As a result, he was rewarded with a golden goose.

He decided to spend the night in an inn, but the innkeeper’s daughters wanted to steal a golden feather from the goose. To shorten this tale, everyone who touched the goose, or the person holding the golden feather became stuck and, in the end, there is a long parade of people following the guy with the goose. This ends with the parade making a princess who has never laughed, find this hilarious. The king gives her hand in marriage to the dumb younger son as a reward for making her laugh, and he eventually inherits the kingdom.

It was no great plot, but it allowed Miss Nicholson to line most of her class up behind the dummy with the goose, without anyone having a lot of lines to learn. Then, her turn to produce a play would be over for the year.

I was chosen to be the first thief to grab for a feather. Mom made me a long blue dress with a white apron for my costume. Warren who was playing the dumb son, whispered he had a real live goose at home that he could bring. “Well, don’t tell Miss Nicholson you’re bringing a real goose to school. She’ll peel and pepper you,” we told him. I’m sure she would have liked to have punished him. She threw one of her temper fits when she saw a real goose in her classroom. Reluctantly, she allowed us to replace the stuffed one. Warren had even sprayed her tail with gold paint.

The play went as planned. At the proper time, I grabbed a feather, and the next cast member grabbed me. Soon a long parade had formed, and we started winding around the stage trying to make the princess laugh. Warren whispered to me, “Twist her tail. That will make her honk, and everyone will laugh.”

It sounded like a good idea to me, so I gave it a sharp twist. We got a honk all right. We got much more than we bargained for. The goose sprayed me with goose poop from my head down. We got a laugh, not only from the princess, but the audience went wild at my expense.

I might have been the only one who didn’t see anything funny. My face turned scarlet, but our play was a big success. I just wanted to go home and take a good bath.