Drive - A Memoir 112th Installment
an
absolute cacophony of noise as wreckage settled and animals panicked.
“Over
there,” I pointed, as the microburst like ‘dust devil’ moved
away tearing up everything in its corridor and throwing it into the
air.
“Jeeze!
That was scary! I about pissed myself,” Russ hissed, as we watched
the swirling burst of energy disappear as suddenly as it arrived. “I
think I’ve heard that these things are called ‘the ghost's
wind.’”
“How
did the animals, birds and insects know the phenomenon was going to
happen?” I asked Russ.
“I
Dunno,”
“I’ve
heard that animals have more abilities than the human’s five
senses, like birds can see ultraviolet light,” I was guessing.
“Blackbirds, which all look black to us humans, are very different
from each other when seen with the bird’s ultraviolet sight.”
“Cool,”
Russ grunted.
“Maybe
they can sense the change in barometric pressure that is in all
probability real low in the middle of that whirlwind just before it
spun out.”
“I
Dunno,” he responded again.
“Maybe
God tried to kill us!” I quipped.
“Yeah,
that’s it,” We laughed, more to relieve stress than the clever
joke.
Spoon
charged out of his house and wanted to know what had happened like we
caused it. We told him… ‘The ghost's wind.’
I
remember seeing a dust devil coming down the hay field once, I told
Russ. The hay was cut and raked. The tornado-like funnel stood a
windrow of hay on its end a hundred feet in the air then dropped it
crosswise to the other rows. It messed up the field bad enough that I
had to re-rake a portion of the field so the Old Man could bale it.
“Oh,
oh,” Russ said, “remember the bizarre flame funnel we called a
'tornado of fire' above the Flying ‘~U~’ hay yard fire?”
“Yeah,
bad memories,” I agreed.
The
Flying ~U~ Ranch was a huge cattle operation near our farm. The Old
Man and several other farmers in the area sold their hay crop to the
Flying ~U~ Ranch. The Ranch had stacked nine hundred tons of hay in a
huge U-shaped stack. I guess the owner had a thing about the letter
U. Well, anyway, late on a summer night, the stack caught fire. Even
though it was several miles to the ranch, we could see the glow from
our house. We piled into the pickup and raced away. When we arrived,
only a few other neighbors had appeared and we went to work. The
Flying ~U~ hands had already attached a huge plow to a tractor and
were plowing a fire break around the blazing fire. We could see
others opening gates to let cattle, horses and other livestock out of
the corrals, and we fell into step with them helping save the
animals.
It
was dreadfully apparent that the nine hundred tons of dry hay could
500 more words tomorrow
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