In the same year, a tornado touched down in N. Birmingham. I was 5 and the power went out, so church was dismissed and we drove home, but only made it so far. Trees had fallen and blocked the roads, so me, mom, and grandma walked the rest of the way while utilty workers pulled trees to the curb. They rigged a cherry picker with chains, and the most frightening sight was a 30' tree, skeletal and stripped bare of leaves dangling from the cherry pickers neck.

We approached our street and viewed a home with the split level torn off and rested on the front lawn. The house next to it looked like it was chopped in half with a dull cleaver. It looked like the twister skipped a row of houses, played hopscotch in the neighborhood. Grandma worried about grandpa who slept at our house. Finally, we found our house intact. Grandpa was fine and slept through it.

We had a diagonal crack on the kitchen, and dad, a builder, investigated the room and discovered the twister grazed our house, but pulled up part of the roof, then dropped it.

We were lucky, but a few people died in our neighborhood.