Riches Among the Rubble
by Renate Harder
In April of 2011 in the Shoal Creek Valley near Ashville,
Alabama, a 32-year-old subsistence farmer left his lot early in
the morning. He intended to plow his leased field three miles
away from his homestead. On his battered tractor, he whistled a
Willie Nelson tune while the birds around took off because of
the machine's sputtering that drowned out frogs' croaking and
dogs' barking.
Kenneth' mind was busy planning the land's use for planting
sorghum and com later. "If ever I'd be able to buy another
tractor I'd be happier and wouldn't spend so much money on
fixing mine," he thought, imagining easier times and maybe a
future purchase of land and even a horse for pleasure riding.
"Always being short of cash is really a burden, killing my
enthusiasm for farming at times."
He passed the bank remembering how the greedy banker had denied
him a loan and left him with a grudge. That hard-hearted man had
stared to the parking lot where his BMW was gleaming and
probably was the cause for his arrogance.
Now the green mountains held the valley cupped in their hands,
for Kenneth a delight to see. As he arrived at the edge of the
field, he put his water bottles and lunch package into the shade
of a bush. For hours he plowed, watched the clouds and flocks of
black birds avoiding a couple of vultures. There was no
presentiment of something unusual by his observations. A little,
cheap radio in his chest pocket with earplugs allowed him to
enjoy Blue Grass music interrupted by advertising. He missed
some kind of warning because the tractor’s loud noise. Soon the
sky turned dark, and the clouds started moving very fast.
"Just one of those upcoming thunderstorms," Kenneth calmed his
mind. "I'll stick it out until it pours on me. Some minutes
later he took shelter under a group of trees along a deep ditch,
resting. Soon peering out from under a bush, he was startled to
see the unusual, strong storm causing the trees to sway
dangerously. He could not escape and get home fast anymore. Now
he heard the shrill sirens giving him goose bumps.
He was shocked to see the first trees topple and a barn
splinter. All of a sudden, a dark, swirling funnel cloud loomed
above the edge of the woods close-by. A horrible tornado,
Kenneth recognized with horror. Instinctively, he threw himself
face down into the deep, muddy ditch. His trembling hands
protected his sweating head as his heart was pounding wildly. He
held his breath for many seconds, feeling as if his blood was
frozen. The deafening noise of the tornado above him paralyzed
him. Like a freight train! It pummeled the woods near him and
overhead. For a moment it resembled ten roaring trucks around
him. Kenneth's stiff body lay motionless.
Trees collapsed or snapped close-by with cracking noises,
crashing on each other on the ground. Debris with leaves and
branches swirled through the air like toys. A branch landed on
Kenneth's back, some small rocks, too. He screamed, "Lord, have
mercy! What a fury!"
For about two minutes, Kenneth lay in a cramp listening and
imagining the worst, fear causing his thoughts to be shaken and
turned upside down. The treacherous storm blew a lady's shoe to
his side. A part of a boat ended up in his ditch right in front
of him. The fury tossed metal sheets from roofs against his
tractor. Broken, wooden boards landed on his plow.
Again natures' immense power ripped out of the ground a mighty
oak tree close to him. The earthen cluster of its roots crashed
against a smaller hickory tree. Cracking tree limbs whirled to
all directions.
"No way to get home right now," Kenneth concluded, his body
still vibrating from the terror and horror. "My safety comes
first." Startled, he witnessed as the storm turned his tractor
upside down. The fury pushed it towards the edge of the field
against a fallen tree trunk.
"How do I ever get home after everything will calm down again?"
Kenneth asked himself. "Only walking is possible. How has my
wife endured such a scary drama? Is my baby safe? Is my mobile
home still standing in its place?" Worried to death, he
regretted that he had not returned home earlier. He realized
that he had missed the radio's warning a minute before the
disaster. But the batteries of the portable radio were intact.
Now the storm blew with reduced force. But Kenneth did not dare
yet to leave the ditch. Soon in a distance, a helicopter roared
above the road probably in search of helpless victims.
Encouraged, Kenneth cautiously crawled out of the ditch. He
rubbed the mud off his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Right
away he checked the devastated surroundings and looked up at the
clearing sky.
To his surprise, among debris and fallen trees around him, many
pieces of paper lay strewn about him. As he picked up one to
look closer, he held a hundred dollar bill in his hand. Other
fifty and twenty dollar bills partly covered with leaves lay
between sticks and rocks, most not torn to pieces at all. With a
racing breath, Kenneth collected more than a hundred different
bills in good condition.
What a special "rain" from the upset sky! "It's a gift just for
me," he thought. "The tornado must have hit the bank in town
which I passed hours ago. I guess that the arrogant banker was
buried under the building's rubble, maybe only trapped. I
wouldn't mind if the fury has smashed his BMW. Anyhow, the
safe's load flew away right towards my field. What good luck! A
collapsed building and a safe ripped apart caused this present
for me. The storm must have blown it straight to my land,
whirling it in the air a lot.
I'll forget morals in this tempest. The money is simply mine. I
won't ask the different banks first which one lost such an
incredible amount. Hiding it and keep quiet about it could buy
me more than another tractor," Kenneth pondered. "How can I keep
it a secret from even my wife?"
As he grabbed the bills, he was still terror-stricken and
breathing irregularly. He stuffed the money into his jeans'
pockets until they were bulging. His pulse raced imagining the
purchases they would make possible.
Now he waited another twenty minutes until a bearable wind still
blew just smaller rubble around. Climbing fallen trees and
dodging root clumps, he reached the devastated roadside. The
storm had snapped power-line posts like matches. They were lying
around everywhere, warning Kenneth not to step on a wire.
Telephone posts and lines lay crisscrossing the almost
impassable, two-lane road. Electric and phone lines crossed
Kenneth's path in the fields, too. Cautiously so as not to get
electrocuted, again and again he dodged them with long strides,
stumbling often. A smashed car upside down blocked the road
close to him.
Kenneth hurried home wondering how other homeowners had survived
the catastrophe. Left and right from the road he saw damage and
total, destruction of houses, barns and woods. Roofs and garages
had caved in. Uprooted trees and ruins of vehicles disfigured
lots everywhere. A dozen houses and barns he passed looked like
piles of broken beams and glass having been toppled by the
tornado's hellish power.
"Most have just the foundations left," Kenneth saw with dismay.
Pets ran around, confused. A herd of horses still panicked,
storming towards the woods. Three cows crossed a toppled fence
in a hurry. A pony and two calves lay stricken and motionless
beside a disconnected propane gas tank.
Some irritated homeowners held their heads in disbelief and
helplessness; others tried to catch the escaping animals,
wringing their hands in desperation and shouting orders and
names. A few children screamed for help, confused and running.
Three victims stared, their bodies frozen and hurt.
"A whole family of fifteen is trapped under the rubble. Come
quickly. Help them," one elderly man shouted like one out of his
mind. But Kenneth walked faster like a robot, his mind in an
uproar out of concern for his own family.
A helicopter whirled above searching for injured victims. The
old man flagged it down. A sigh of relief left Kenneth who was
watching. He understood that no emergency vehicle could come
along for a rescue because the only road was covered with trees
and dangerous electric lines. A stove was hanging in a torn
fence. A bathtub was tangled up with a baling machine. Wheels
from a trailer swam on a fishpond beside wooden boards. Even the
tornado had sucked some fish out of the pond and blown into the
grass.
Twisted metal sheets from roofs lay strewn everywhere and hung
in still standing, debarked trees. Parts of a horse trailer were
mangled with a broken metal gate of a pasture. Remnants of a
window hung in branches high up. Kenneth had to climb over a
door partly lying under a tractor on its side which had buried
some chickens. In a pasture, a live hull had lost his
orientation and was fighting a ruined garden chair.
Soon, Kenneth fought for breath but did not allow himself time
for resting. Automatically, his legs obeyed him as he dodged
branches, tree trunks and parts of machinery, even broken
electronics and chairs. It took him several times the usual
number of minutes to reach his home, a gray mobile home at the
edge of the woods along Shoal Creek.
But what a shock to discover it smashed by two trees on its
roof. His wife, Melinda, squatted on the dislocated three steps,
their toddler, Brandon, cradled in her arms. Both wore
improvised bandages around their limbs. The boy was crying
because of a bloody wound in his face.
"Good grief, Melinda! Are both of you hurt badly? I hope just
scratches and bruises. My little Brandon, my sunshine, let me
calm you down."
"Finally you are back, honey," she uttered. I think, no
fractured bones. That was hell on earth, I tell you. Now try to
help us. It's urgent, Kenneth. See our hurting legs and arms?"
He passed his hand over the toddler's head tenderly several
times. "At least you are alive." He hugged both, taking a closer
look at his little son. "I hope soon some medic will pass by,
Melinda. Give me a white sheet. I'll flag down the helicopter
with it in case it'll fly low over our lot.... Now let me look
around. I need to check on our few belongings, on food. I want
to see what's left." He kissed Brandon's hand and her cheek.
Carrying Brandon in her arms, Melinda assisted him, pulling
clothes from under the trailer's caved-in walls and collapsed
roof with one hand. They found a few usable pots and pans from
the former kitchen, a few cereal boxes, and some pairs of dusty
shoes. They gathered everything in a pile some yards away for
safety.
In a smashed shed, Kenneth found his buried tools and chain saw
intact with a few gallons of gas in a dented container. He
started sawing and cutting the collapsed oak and hickory trees
on top of the mobile home, then pulled away branches.
Melinda gathered from the ruin more leftovers of groceries and
soiled souvenirs while the toddler slept on a plastic sheet in
the shade. Exhausted after hours of collecting debris on a pile,
both parents plopped down on tree stumps, their scratched hands
limply hanging down over their knees.
"The first thing we need after salvaging is shelter for the
night. We can huddle together in the only bedroom left," Kenneth
suggested. "I'll patch up the hole in the roof first of course."
'He wrapped his sore arm around her.
"At last something, away from the elements," she responded,
sighing. "By the way, why are your pants' pockets bulging like
never before?"
Now Kenneth could not escape. He had to stick to the truth. “In
all the disaster I got lucky today. Imagine ..." He told her
what had happened, ending as she gaped at him. "A rain of dollar
bills. I urge you to keep the secret. Surely now we are in dire
need of using the dollars for a new home."
"What an unusual blessing! Let's see whether it'll be enough for
a mobile home. We've to replace this useless one." After
counting several times and putting the bills on piles, both were
flabbergasted about the high amount and decided to use it
quietly for the purchase.
"I don't feel guilty to keep the money and not to return it to
the bank," Kenneth stated. "To which bank anyhow? Maybe the Lord
helped us like that, and we deserved this blessing."
"Nobody should get to know about our streak of luck," she
concluded giving him a peck on his cheek.
“I had wished for a new tractor and for buying some land. But
now we have to postpone such a purchase. The rest of the new
money might be just enough for repairing the storm-damaged
tractor. I've to puzzle out in the next days how to remove the
tractor from the field. I must get it to a mechanic. Or the
technician has to come to my non-functioning machine.", With the
elbow on his knee and his chin in the palm of his right hand, he
pondered the options until his wife started making order again
with the rubble. She collected branches and broken building
material. Every time she dumped everything on a pile for burning
it later.
The next day, walking at the roadside towards Ashville and
passing crews clearing at least one lane of the road, Kenneth
got a lift to town by a truck driver hauling wire for another
group of technicians restoring power. In Ashville, Kenneth
purchased a doublewide mobile home as the first relief for his
small family. As he paid cash for it, the salesman could hardly
hide his surprise. He promised to deliver the trailer as soon as
the only road in the Shoal Creek Valley could be used and would
be free of debris.
In the next hours in town, Kenneth found a mechanic who took him
back to his field for estimating the cost of repairing the
tractor. "Not worth bothering with," the experienced technician
judged the ruin in the mud.
"Oh good grief," Kenneth regretted heaving a sigh. He passed his
hand over his forehead to get rid of the sweat. "One trouble
alone hits you seldom."
"I'm sorry that my good intention to help you was in vain. This
vehicle is not even worth hauling away." Open-mouthed and with
furrowed brow, Kenneth accepted the disheartening news. Now the
two men left discussing tractor prices as they stumbled over
rubble. After minutes, the mechanic with his negative estimate
dropped off Kenneth at his ravaged lot.
"Surely for the future work some neighbor will lend me a tractor
at times. Perhaps I can rent one," Kenneth hoped. Seeing so many
slaving home and farm owners along the road brought up a daze in
Kenneth's mind.
He saw people look through their useless rubble and make order
for bonfires. Kenneth could not easily come out of his stupor
when he watched a farmer bury some of his livestock. "Federal
disaster aid will take some time to arrive, no doubt," he
reflected gloomily.
But moments later as he looked into the beaming eyes of his
toddler, he thought gratefully, "At least the three of us are
alive and can go on caring for each other. This duty and
pleasure will surely build up my strength in the days to come."
Smiling, he picked up his child, whirled him around in a circle,
and, with delight, put him on his shoulders to walk over to
their temporary ruined dwelling. Kenneth got hearty laughs from
little Brandon and wife as he imitated a singing bird with an
off-key whistle.
"The best things in life have nothing to do with money. A
tornado can't destroy our spirit either," he assured himself
again. "In spite of the disaster, our day lilies, daisies and
petunias bloom over there in their precious way to praise our
Creator."