Storm Racing. (original) (raw)

In 1900 it had not occurred to anyone that pursuing a tornado would someday be considered an adventure sport. Back then, people let storms do the chasing and took to their cellars when they heard a roaring wind.

Minnie Tims Harper lived with her husband and three children on a ranch eight miles from Childress. Recalling what happened one spring day decades after the fact, she described their ranch as being on �a lonely hilltop.� Her husband often had to be gone for days at a time, making that hilltop �depressingly lonely.�

That�s why she welcomed any opportunity to hitch up the team, load the kids in the buggy and go to Childressfor supplies or simply to visit friends. But one day she came close to paying a dear price for the sake of having someone to talk to. �I had imprudently visited too long�and had been too late starting home,� she recalled.

She�d gone only a short distance from town when the wind picked up and she noticed that �the atmosphere had grown hazy.� Looking behind her, she saw a dark cloud building low on the horizon.

�I drove on unmindful of danger and was past the last house on my route before I thought again of the cloud,� she wrote. �When I looked, I was alarmed. It was a wind cloud and moving swiftly toward us.�

In modern meteorlogical speak, �wind cloud� means wall cloud, the dangerous formation from which tornados spawn. Indeed, the storm already produced strong gusts. Tumbleweeds shot past the buggy and blowing sand stung the back of Minnie�s neck.

Turning back around, she swatted the horses with her whip, the equivalent of stepping on the gas. Dixie picked up his gait, but Walter bolted forward too fast, forcing Dixie to increase his pace to keep up.

�I [envisioned] at once the team racing wildly across the prairie hitting prairie dog mounds, cat-claw bushes and thorny mesquite, dashing the children out one by one, or the team likely crashing into a barbed wire fence leaving our managled bodies and buggy wreckage entangled in the wire,� she wrote.

Moving as far forward in the seat as she could and bracing her feet against the dash, Minnie pulled the reins tight with both hands to slow the team while fighting an urge to make the horses go even faster.

�I was reasoning that if the storm did overtake us the result might be just as fatal,� she continued. �I could not, in either case, hope to save all the children. I even caught myself wondering which one I should try first to save. A maddening thought � there was no choice.�

Suddenly the wind stopped, followed by what Minnie called a �brooding calm� -- another indication of a tornado.

Clearly, the horses had picked up on Minnie�s nervousness, as had her children. The kids became �cross and fretful� while Walter the fractious horse tossed his head, shied easily and moved at an irregular gait.

Reaching the first gate of three gates on her route, she pulled the horses to a stop, hopped out of the buggy, tied the reins to a fence post and ran to open the gap. Then she had to unhitch, get back in the buggy, walk the team through, tie the horses again, climb down, close the gate, and untie the horses.

�This same amount of precious time had to be wasted at each gate,� she wrote. �After each ordeal, delayed by my clumsy shaking fingers, my nerves were keyed to the breaking point as I started on.�

Now within a quarter mile of their white, two-story ranch house, Minnie reined the team to open the last gate.

�The wind was so strong that when I took two steps forward I was blown back one,� she recalled.

When she got back on the buggy, the horses panicked. Chomping down on their bits with their heads up and ears forward, Dixie and Walter broke into a full gallop heading straight toward the strong plank fence around their yard.

�God help us!� Minnie screamed, pulling on the reins as hard as she could while talking soothingly to the horses. When they paid no attention, Minnie resorted to punishment, sawing the bits back and forth in their mouths. But still they ran.

And then the storm hit with full force, ripping Minnie�s hat from her head and streaming her long hair in front of her face. Above the screaming of her children she heard a roaring sound.

�Grown vicious with fear for the children�s safety, I jerked savagely at the right rein while damning the horses for unruly beasts,� she wrote. �This treatment swung them enough to avoid disaster.�

As tree limbs became deadly projectiles in the wind, Minnie got Dixie�s reins tied to the fence. When Walter jerked his reins from her hands she decided she had done all she could for the horses. Grabbing her baby from her oldest son, the tenacious ranch wife half-led, half-dragged her two boys to the safety of the cellar.

Her written account, published in 1944, stops suddenly there. But no matter how much damage the storm ended up doing to her home, she and her children survived her wild race with the wind.

�

Mike Cox - March 1 , 2012 column
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