I was looking at my calendar the other day and saw it was almost Columbus day …. Now that brought back some memories. It was 1962 and I was sitting in my class room in Portland Oregon when I noticed it was getting windy; sometimes the wind would kick up and throw stuff at the window. Before long there was a constant tapping of debris. Soon my teacher’s phone buzzed and the next thing I knew it was early dismissal. A friend of mine and I shared a bike ride from time to time and it was his turn to pedal while I sat on the seat. We got about half way home when he said that he couldn’t pedal any more because of the strong wind so we walked the bike the rest of the way……… I should say ……. more like pushing the bike home. The wind was so strong that we had to lean forward just to keep going. After getting home from school I did my chores and went back out into the wind. By now it was getting dark and my parents would be home soon. I noticed all the lights in the house were flickering but I never thought it was because of the wind. As my dad backed the car up the drive way I could see they both had a funny look on there face. I found out what their look was when they got out of the car, the look was for me, and they had words that went with the look too. They made it known to me very fast that I shouldn’t be in the storm….. ‘Storm!” I said. “I didn’t know it was a storm I thought it was just windy.”

My dad was always in some way or form in scouting. For a number of years he even taught first aid to the explorers and it seemed to me that he was always prepared. As soon as we went into the house he explained to me that this wind has now turned into a big storm and that we should go into the basement to be safe. He also told me that the lights might go out but that we had candles and flashlights. We also had food and wood for the fireplace in the basement. We could hear the storm even in the basement. The wind howled. I kept my ear to the transistor radio until I fell asleep.

By the next morning the storm had ended and seemed very quiet. Mom said we had no electricity, Dad said it was a good thing it was Saturday! There’s no way they could have driven to work because of all the downed trees on the roads. I was told to stay in the house because of the downed wires; Dad said that some of the wires may give me a shock or even kill me. When I went upstairs and looked out the window I couldn’t believe what I saw. The streets were a big mess. There were fallen trees all over the place, some had fallen on houses, over the roads, on cars, one of two trees on our parking strip had fallen . It seemed that the only tree that was left standing was our giant weeping willow in our backyard. As I looked out the window I could see the older boys and men cleaning up the debris in their yards, soon you could hear the sounds of chain saws cutting through the fallen trees up and down the streets.

Some of the trees were cleared from the streets to allow the power trucks with their crews to start working on the power lines. Some big trucks were now driving up and down our street picking up debris……… It was pretty exciting! The next day Dad finally said it was ok for me to go out . I got dressed, and out the door I went. I went over to my friends’ to check out their streets and to hear their stories. We shared our adventure stories while we climbed all over the trees that were blown down.

The storm’s path went through parts of California, Oregon and Washington; 46 people died, the wind was a steady 66 mph with gusts of 100+; thousands of homes and businesses had no power for days, and property damage loss was in the millions.

Hold on, it’s windy!

Grandpa Tom