Tornado
The closest I’ve ever been to a tornado was in the summer of 1973 — in Ontario, California.
My then husband and I lived with our toddler daughter in a small two bedroom home one block east of Euclid Avenue — a 7-mile long boulevard leading toward the San Gabriel mountains. Once noted for its exceptional beauty, the avenue had double rows of 100 year-old pepper trees lining its broad, grassy center divide.
Until that day.
The neighborhood we lived in was a hodgepodge of grand but aging wood frame houses and tiny stucco boxes. Our neighbors ranged from a dotty elderly widow (next door) whose family had made a good deal of money in the heyday of the orange groves, to a young professional couple withthree children (across the street), to several families at the end of the block barely scraping a living out of their jobs at the Sunkist plant, or from welfare and food stamps.
It was a relatively quiet and safe street, only two blocks long, though occasionally its peace would be broken by hot rodders streaking down it at full speed, screeching to a halt at the Euclid Avenue stop sign.
It was a good place, or so it seemed, for a couple without a lot of money to raise…
