Memories!

                                                                                           By Pastor F. M. Riley

                                                                                           April 8, 2020

     OLD TESTAMENT LAW…..

     “And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,”  Deuteronomy 10:12 

     NEW TESTAMENT GRACE…..

     “Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked Him a question, tempting Him, and saying,

      Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 

     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

     This is the first and great commandment.”   Matthew 23:35-38. 

Introduction

Our readers may find this to be a strange Scripture text for what I want to write about.  Nevertheless, it is the Scripture text the Lord laid on my heart this morning as I awoke from sleep, thinking about how good and gracious the Lord God has been to me across the many years of my life.  I hope my personal memories of an event in my life will be a blessing to our readers,…….

THE GREAT TORNADO

     It was 73 years ago, on April 9, 1947, when it struck my small hometown.  I have often thought about the year.  It was the same year that the United Nations voted to end the British Mandate over the Holy Land, and allow the Jews to return and form their own nation again in their own ancient homeland.  Perhaps no connection at all, but the thought has often intrigued me.  Was this one of the “sigtns” the Lord gave indicating that with the restoration of Israel as a nation, the “last days” of this present dispensation had begun?   

      My little hometown was in the panhandle of Texas, way up near the top of Texas if you look on a map.  The name of the town was Higgins, just a little wide spot in the road on US Highway 60. The population of the town was a little over 700 people, and it never increased much as I was growing up.  I was born and grew up there, and the town was dear to me.  It was a little farming community, where everyone in town knew everyone else in town, and everyone tried to be a good neighbor.   It was a great place for a child to grow up.

     I was 13 years old at the time, and had never heard of a tornado.  Today, the panhandle of Texas is a “hot spot” for tornadoes to form and move eastward.  But back then I honestly didn’t even know what a tornado was.  But I learned quickly.

     The time was 7:28 p.m. when the electrical power was cut off, as the manager of the local electric company saw the tornado approaching the town, and quickly moved to shut down the power. 

     My mother had just put our evening meal on the kitchen table, when the hail began pounding the roof, sounding like it was going to come right on through the roof.   I ran out on the porch to see how big the hail was that was causing such a racket when it hit the roof.  For the first time in my young life I saw hailstones  as large or larger than a baseball falling all over the yard.   I had never seen anything like that before in my entire young life. 

      I excitedly ran back into the kitchen to tell my Mom and Dad what I had seen, but just as I entered the kitchen, the entire roof of our house blew off, and the kitchen ceiling came crasing down onto the kitchen table, where we would have been sitting had we not heard the hail beating on the roof.  There is no question in my mind all these years later, that it was the Lord God’s GRACE and MERCY upon us  in saving our lives. 

     The walls of our house immediately blew down, leaving only the corner of the kitchen with the kitchen door standing.  My Mom and Dad and I all rushed to that corner, and fell upon our knees, and began crying out in prayer to God for His mercy upon us.  My Mom and Dad and I, were all Christian believers, and we knew WHO to call upon for help. 

     The tornado funnel was still upon us, when we walked out of our house right over the fallen walls, feeling the need to seek shelter from the storm raging around us.   We joined hands tightly and headed for an old concrete cellar a block and a half away, hoping and praying we would make it.   At that time most of the people in our little town were still using wood and coal stoves for heating.  It had been a cool day and many stoves were burning that evening.  Fires immediately sprang up all over town as houses were blown down, and the flames and debris from the fires was being blown everywhere.  We could easily see everything that was happening, even though it was pitch dark inside of the tornado funnel. 

     Just a short distance from what had been our home, we actually and literally saw a large Collie Dog coming directly towards us.  That dog was being blown through the air about three feet off the ground.  With the wind so strong, there was no way to avoid the dog.  That dog struck my mother right in the chest, knocking her to the ground, and then being  blown on off into the darkness.  By God’s grace my Dad and I had a tight grip on my mother’s hands, and were able to instantly pull her back to her feet and continue on towards the shelter of that old cellar. 

     Just as we entered the old cellar, the tornado funnel passed on through  the town, and it began to pour down rain along with terrible lightning.  This lasted only a few minutes as it was being carried along as part of the storm cloud producing the tornado.  Then everything became deathly still.

     We then could hear the screams of others trapped in the wreckage of their homes.  My Dad made sure my Mom and I were safe in a corner of the cellar, then he left to try and help others.  Several other people were brought to the cellar over the next few minutes and hours,  some of whom were terribly injured. One young girl, who was in my class at school, was brought to the cellar, who had  a piece of lumber driven completely through her chest.  It was sticking out both the front and back of her body.  It had missed her heart, but had pieced her lung.  We could hear the blood gurgling in her lung every time she took a breath. 

     The bodies of an elderly man and wife, were laying in the street right in front of that old cellar.  Their home across the street was complexly gone.  Both of them had been using wheel chairs to get about due to their age and physical condition.  There was no sign of their wheel chairs.  One of the wheel chairs was found later inside of a born two blocks away, totally crushed.   

     In the night sky, it appeared that the entire business district of town was on fire, with the glow of the fire lighting up the night sky.   As it turned out two or three old wood frame business buildings had caught fire and burned. 

     One of those buildings was the town’s pool hall.  My uncle owned the pool hall, having bought it as a source of income for his family only three weeks previously.  When the old building collapsed he was trapped in the building, and burned to death, along with eight other men who were in the building when the tornado struck.  The business my uncle had bought to provide an income for himself and his family became his funeral pyre.

      About midnight my Dad returned to the cellar to get me.  He wanted me to help him dig survivors out of their destroyed houses.  About that same time people from neighboring towns began to arrive, as word of the tornado had finally reached them.  What a blessing those people were!  Ambulances were brought in and the injured were taken to hospitals in neighboring towns.  Hearses were also brought  in to carry  the bodies of the dead to funeral homes in neighboring towns.       

     At about 3 a.m. in the morning my Dad and I finally reached main street and went to the pool hall to see about my uncle.  We found there was no pool hall.  Only ashes remained of where it had been.  Then the police and highway patrol officers which had arrived cautioned us not to walk into the ashes of the pool hall. There were no bodies of the nine men who had burned to death in that pool hall, only ashes, for the fire had been so intensely hot that even the bodies were consumed.  The officers were being very careful where they stepped, trying to identify where each body had burned into ashes by the contents in the pockets of those burned.  They were also trying to contact surviving family members to come and look at pocket knives, nail clippers,  rings, watches, belt buckles, etc. in an attempt to identify which items belonged to each person burned to death by the contents in their pockets on them, which would not burn.

  

    

       Can our readers even imagine the traumatic experience this was for a thirteen year old boy, when asked to look into the ashes and identify those items which had belonged to my uncle?    Yes, I had loved my uncle and his family.  My family and his family had always been  close. 

     Nevertheless, I looked into those ashes and immediately recognized my uncles’s pocket watch, which he always carried in the bib of his overalls.  He had finally sold his farm and moved to town.  This little boy, who up to that time  had  apparently been in a state of shock from the tornado, and from what I had already seen,  broke into tears and cried from then on throughout the rest of the night, and from time to time throughout the next day.

     That tornado passed through our small town in an estimated three to five minutes.  It killed 46 people in that small town.   Two of them were my classmates in school.   When school was dismissed that day, I had no idea I would never see them again in this life.  How very uncertain life is.  One of my classmates was killed in the wreckage of his home.  The other classmate was a young girl who was blown outside of her home when the storm hit.  Flying sheet metal had severed her head from her body as neatly as if it had been done by a surgeon. 

     The next morning, April 10^th, my Mom, Dad, and I, returned to what had been our home.  There was nothing left but the corner of the kitchen where we had all knelt in prayer and cried out to the Lord for mercy.  Everything else was gone.  We had no home!  We spent that entire day salvaging from the wreckage, whatever we could find that was still useful, and packing it up in whatever we could find to pack it in. 

     The salvage included our two old 1937 Ford cars.  One of them was ruined beyond repair.   A huge broken light pole, at some point during the tornado, had landed directly on the top of the car, and smashed the top right down into the seats.  All four tires had blown out from the weight of the pole, and from the force with which the pole had landed.  My Dad removed the pole from the car, but it was useless.  The entire steering column had been jerked from the car when the pole hit . 

     The top and the windows were all gone in the other old car, but otherwise it could be started and driven.  We used it for several months afterward, because we had no other transportation. 

     Even though we lived in town, we had both cows and chickens, which was not unusual in that small farming town.  Others in town also had “livestock.”  As we checked the next morning, the fences were all gone and the cows were out grazing on whatever they could find…..all except for one.  That one cow was bawling and wailing in the most pitiful wailing sound  I have ever heard coming from an animal.  That cow had a piece of broken 2 x 4 sticking out of both sides of her body..  My Dad  had no choice but to shoot the cow and put her out of her misery.       

     Oh, about the chickens.  Of course the chicken house was gone and the chickens were scattered everywhere.  But have our readers ever seen a live chicken without any feathers?  Every chicken that had survived was walking around stark bald naked, without a feather on them.  And with the Sun shining down on them the next morning, they were already beginning to blister with sunburn.  My relatives rounded them up, and killed chickens all day long, giving them to whomever would take them.  We didn’t have freezers back in those days, so the chickens had to be killed and eaten speedily, or they would spoil.

     Our little town only had three churches in the town.  All three were destroyed by the tornado.  Two had to be totally rebuilt,, and the damage to the third was such that it could be repaired.  

     Our school building was severely damaged, but it too could be repaired.  We had no more school that year, but the building was repaired to the extent that the grade school graduation service was held in the building, while it was still being repaired.  I was in the 8^th grade in school and had a part in the graduation services.  The graduation was held in what had been the gymnasium of the school.  The roof had not yet been repaired.  The Lord God mercifully gave us good weather until the graduation service had been concluded, and right at the end of it, the heaven opened and it poured rain the rest of the night.   We graduates from grade school had to grab our diplomas and run to get out of the rain.  How good and gracious is our God! 

     But as I draw close to the end of this article about my memories, I want to give a compliment and boost to THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.   

     For several weeks following the tornado, my Mom and Dad and I, stayed with our relatives, as we had no home!   But one day someone knocked on the door of the home where we were staying.  It was a representative of the AMERICAN RED CROSS.  After introducing herself, the lady told us that the Red Cross was building a new home for everyone who had lost their home in the tornado, and was not financially able to build another one.  She was there to discuss where we wanted our new house built, and to plan out the design of it.  To say that we were amazed is putting it mildly.  No charitable organization had ever offered us anything previously.  But the lady was not joking.  The AMERICAN  RED CROSS  built and gave to us a brand new house for our home.  It didn’t cost us a cent!   How we thanked and praised the Lord God of Heaven, the day we moved in.  Since that time I have been contacted by many charitable groups with their hands out wanting a donation.  I have learned that many of them are frauds.   Our readers had better check them out carefully before donating.  But over the years, when I have been financially able to donate, my donations have gone to THE AMERICAN RED CROSS. 

     There are many more details that were branded into my mind by that terrible tornado, and the after math of it; details that  I will never forget until the Lord Jesus comes to give me a new body and a new home.  Praise His Holy Name! 

     Dear readers, Almighty God has promised in His inspired Word to always watch over and care for His believing people, and He keep His promises.  I am now an old man of 86 years old.  I made a Scripture verse sign on poster board,  and mounted it on  my bedroom wall.  When I awaken every morning, I am looking directly at it as a reminder to pray and ask direction of the Lord for each new day.  The Scripture I chose…….

     “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread,”  Psalm 37:25.  To God be the glory! 

    If the reader is not a born-again, absolutely certain, saved believer, please read Ephesians 2:8-10.  Believe what you read.  Pray and follow the instructions given exactly, by confessing your sin unto God, and placing YOUR FAITH in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord,  and Romans 10:13 will become a reality in your heart, mind, and soul. 

     I’d like to meet every reader in glory when the Lord comes to resurrect and rapture His believing people to glory.  Please take heed and make that certain, John 3:16-18; 14:1-3. 

<<<<<<<       O       >>>>>>>

Pastor Francis M. Riley

francismriley34@gmail.com