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 Making ""a separate peace"

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alj
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alj


Number of posts : 9633
Registration date : 2008-12-05
Age : 80
Location : San Antonio

Making ""a separate peace" Empty
PostSubject: Making ""a separate peace"   Making ""a separate peace" EmptyTue May 29, 2012 9:53 am

A frequent poster on another message board I am a member of, this morning, posted that she had watched a tornado form outside her window. Her post drew a lot of responses, including this one from me (or from my pseudonymic alter for that site):


Quote :
My ex did that once. We were on vacation in Florida when we saw the beginnings of a waterspout forming. While the rest of us were frantically getting patio furniture moved into the rooms, hubby calmly walked down to the beach with his camera and took pictures. Great pics, actually. I would show you, but they were in his part of the settlement.

I had my own experience with a tornado when I was 14. It was just after our Jr. High homecoming game. We were dancing, in the school gym, to the tune, "Stardust," when a train roared by the building - only there were no tracks that close to us. Then the lights went out. After a few minutes, the chaperones got everyone quiet and seated on the bleachers while the principal explained that we had been in the path of a tornado. "Buildings are down all around us," I remember him saying. That really helped us to stay calm.

The next day the newspaper ran a picture taken from a helicopter. The tornado had made a beeline straight through the middle of town. When it got to the gym, it made a perfect semicircle around it, then went back on its original straight-line track.

I believe there is a God.

But, I agree - they are fascinating to watch.

After a few more comments were made, I started "remembering more":


Quote :
I'm remembering more. One of the buildings that was "down" was the team's club house. The coaches, trainers, and captains were still inside. One of the captains needed to get to his car for his sport coat, but the coaches were teasing him by throwing his keys back and forth. When he finally got his keys, he went to the door to go out, but the door came off its hinges and blew away into the rain and wind. About the same time, the guys inside started to feel a popping in their ears, and a ripping sound above them. They looked up to see the roof coming off the building. One of the coaches shouted "Hit the floor!" Most of them were already there. As soon as things got quiet, the coaches sent one of the trainers to the gym, to report that they were all OK.

It was the next morning when they discovered that the roof had landed on the team captain's car and flattened it. That captain believes in God so much he became a preacher.

I remember so many of these details - I just realized - because I was the reporter for the school newspaper who was assigned to cover the story. I started typing and it all came back.

It wouldn't have been appropriate, for that site, to have added the additional memories that came after. It fits more here, so you guys have to suffer it, I guess.

What I remembered next had to do with something that occurred almost twenty years later.

That brave runner, the trainer who was sent to the gym, became a cop. One night during the mid-to-late seventies, he and a group of officers apprehended a known local felon, and were quite pleased with themselves for managing it. They were a bit taken off guard when a couple of cohorts of their prisoner broke into the jail, with guns, and demanded the release of their relative/friend, and started firing. The policemen went for cover and started firing back. Only their leader, that same hero from the night of the tornado, instead of seeking cover, ran toward the intruders. In a very ungodly instant, one of the officers fired, and his bullet struck his companion in the back of the head, killing him instantly.

At the trial of the intruders, the prosecutors were able to explain, with legal precedent, that those intruders were guilty of murder, for having illegally entered the jailhouse, and having started the exchange of gunfire. The officer who fired the shot was declared innocent.

What makes the story even more poignant for me was the fact that the officer who fired that shot was my first cousin. I know the extent of the difficulty he had in coming to his own separate peace.

What I am seeing now is how that external observer's experience influenced my own thinking as I wrote of the concept in both "A Time for Peace" and in the novel, Redstone Stories.

Just another example of the way we write our own stories, and how our personal experiences, even from a distance, affect the way we write about them.

Ann



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dkchristi
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Making ""a separate peace" Empty
PostSubject: Re: Making ""a separate peace"   Making ""a separate peace" EmptyTue May 29, 2012 11:08 am

My dreams are usually like movies I would choose to watch, except those that include a tornado or a hurricane. Perhaps because of the following:

Child: My foster father worked for the newspaper. He was in the car with the loudspeaker on top telling everyone to go to their basements as the tornado came roaring in. We had a half basement. It tore a swath through town. He came home the next morning. We were terrified, still huddled in that half basement.

Adult: It was 3:00 a.m. as I rolled into my mom's house - and all the lights were on. She and my stepdad were in the basement. "Why are you in the basement?" "A tornado was spotted over the Holiday Inn in Spring Lake an hour ago and was headed this way." I had been dancing right through it - it took out a row of apartments next to the Holiday Inn.

Sailor: We were a half mile from a tiny little mangrove island as the tornado (water spout in the sea) snaked across the sky in our direction, a swath of ocean climbing up its spout. There were three sons, my spouse and me. We could feel the air being sucked into the whirling dervish and believed we were doomed but had one last plan. We loaded all the rope and floats we could find into the dink and went full throttle for the little island. The plan was to lash to the roots of the mangroves and pray. As we reached the island, the snake disintegrated and dropped the whirling dervish. The black sky opened to bright sunshine.

Single: A friend and I looked around the 1800's southern mansion up on cement blocks to see if any spot was safer as the daylight turned black and the train roared in our direction. We peeked under the winding stairwell and it was scarier than the thought of the tornado. By the time we decided, the roar was gone and the blackness was more gray. We looked out the window. All the trees were gone in a row, the pavement torn up in the drive to the next house, the fence was gone. The garages were gone. Both houses were untouched.
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Al Stevens
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Making ""a separate peace" Empty
PostSubject: Re: Making ""a separate peace"   Making ""a separate peace" EmptyTue May 29, 2012 5:49 pm

A tornado went through Cocoa Beach a few years back. It tore up some ground, then lifted up and went directly over a Methodist church. It touched down on the other side without hitting the church, crossed the street, and tore the roof off a topless bar/lapdance emporium and overturned all the cars in the bar's parking lot.

I had three thoughts about that.

1. How did the patrons who were in the bar explain to their wives how their cars got torn up that evening?
2. Imagine the sermon the following Sunday.
3. The missing roof gave new meaning to "topless bar."

I have nightmares about tornados. I blame them on "The Wizard of Oz."
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Abe F. March
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PostSubject: Re: Making ""a separate peace"   Making ""a separate peace" EmptyTue May 29, 2012 9:31 pm

Great stories. The memories last a lifetime. My wife and I experienced a "near miss" while living in Georgia. Nothing as dramatic as your stories, but the memory is still very real.
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dkchristi
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PostSubject: Re: Making ""a separate peace"   Making ""a separate peace" EmptyTue May 29, 2012 10:48 pm

Al, what a great story, especially the follow-up!
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slb
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Making ""a separate peace" Empty
PostSubject: Re: Making ""a separate peace"   Making ""a separate peace" EmptyFri Jun 01, 2012 5:40 pm

Al, I like that story. Something similar could be used in a book. With those same questions.
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dkchristi
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dkchristi


Number of posts : 8594
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Making ""a separate peace" Empty
PostSubject: Re: Making ""a separate peace"   Making ""a separate peace" EmptyFri Jun 01, 2012 8:11 pm

Agreed!
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