Illinois tornado preparedness week.....uh oh

I hate, yet am fascinated, by severe weather

     I grew up in Chicago.  We didn't have severe weather.  Sure, we had burglaries, shootings, flooded streets. (Which were always viewed as a plus by young kids because we could swim in the streets.  Surprised we all didn't get cholera or some other disease.)  But tornadoes?  Hardly ever.
      Living out here is an adjustment.  Not a good one.
      We were living above what is now B & W Appliances on IL 38.  We had a two bedroom apartment on the second floor...one of three apartments in the building.
       On  Good Friday in 1970 a storm came...the A & W Root Beer Stand to the east of the building lost its corrugated roof...and I, well, first things first.  Sequence.
       The storm seemed to be pretty strong, so I knocked on the apartment next to us, (Jackie may say I pounded) ...the one with the thin walls.  (Seriously, Jackie and I were just married.  We were in bed one night and she said, in a rather masculine voice, "Did you set the alarm."  And I answered in a rather feminine voice. We eventually moved the bed away from the wall because you could hear everything.  And the lady next door was very religious.  She would yell for God several times a night.  And I think he had trouble breathing...)
       Like I said, I knocked on the door and when she answered I asked (Jackie may say I shrieked) about where we would go in a tornado.
       She had been relatively calm at that point, but I may have upset her because she started crying and she wasn't in bed.
       When I was walking back to our apartment, part of the roof of the A and W went through the window of the unit across the hall.  I remember watching the rubber pad in the hall way flapping up and down because the newly opened window was letting in a lot of wind.
       There commenced a lot of screaming at that point.
       I yelled "Tornado" and ran for the basement.
       The lady started screaming "Tornado" and I shouted back  "We're all going to die!  Where the hell is the basement?"
        Jackie, meanwhile was watching this scene with complete amazement.  As was the lady's husband.  The two of us were screaming and yelling, the neighbor and Jackie stood at the top of the stairs and watched.
        He finally got her into her apartment and got her calmed down.  It took me a little while. They moved a few weeks later.
        When the weather alarm goes off, I listen carefully.  Then I head to the basement.  I try to convince Jackie to go, but usually she stays near the stairs.
        And I do a lot of running up and down, looking out windows, checking doors, looking out windows, running downstairs, coming back up.
      In fact, I find it very tiring to be in a storm.
      Last year we had tornado warnings.....a neighbor in a nearby subdivision said he wasn't worried because the sirens didn't go off.
      He was a little taken aback when I told him we didn't have sirens out here....make sure you have a radio.
      But then again, if the storm is bad enough, he may be able to hear me shrieking over the roaring wind.