Rainington, Tornadiana

It started raining last night around sundown. Kept raining all night long and into the morning. It rained all day. Sometimes hard, sometimes hardly at all, but more and more and more rain, until I’m thinking they should change the name of this town to Rainington.

Meanwhile we’re packing up, getting ready to go.

I drove from Bloomington to Monrovia to return my parents card table. The day has been spent on tasks such as this.

We decided to rent a second car for the trip back. Whilst picking it up at the Budget Rental Depot, it started to rain more furiously than ever.

And then the sirens started to go off. A tornado is headed our way at 60 mph.

I stop by the Monroe County Public Library to pick up a tape. Uniformed people with walkie talkies are at the door. “We’re under a tornado warning, sir. You’re welcome to come in, but you’ll have to go to go downstairs.”

So I went downstairs. Everybody in the whole damn library was there, in CATS. They wouldn’t let us out until the danger of the tornado was past.

For a brief moment, I was kind of choked up.

Meanwhile, a guy named Lee was delivering a DVD set of the first six episodes of ROX to our house. He was sitting out in his car waiting for me, and of course a car isn’t the best place to be if a tornado hits. Fortunately he had the good sense to drop the DVDs in our mailbox and get out of there.

So it looks as though our stay here has been bookended by severe weather: a hurricane brought us here and a tornado decided to see us off.