June 27, 2002

The heavy traffic in the residential districts over in San Angelo the past three months has been from the three hailstorms generating a brisk business in roofers posting company signs in front yards and insurance adjusters loading and unloading ladders from the curbs. Actual restoration of the roofs and processing of the claims won't cause any jams of any nature, except that by fall, ombudsmen for insurance companies and better business bureaus will probably be flooded with complaints.

Mertzon had a summer windstorm two weeks ago from this writing. Ominous dark clouds rolled in from the northwest and west, igniting the skies with lightning and shaking the townsite with claps of thunder. Biggest danger was whether the multitude of mobile homes scattered about town were going to stay grounded. Previous storms, however, taught the mobile dwellers to anchor the houses to the hard limestone bedrock endemic to any site in Mertzon, so losses were limited to fallen limbs and torn shingles or flashing.

Electric service failed once the atmosphere became charged with celestial electricity. My partner and I remained calm as our interest was whether the front reached our respective ranches some 22 and 35 miles to the south of town. Whether we survived the storm or expired in the darkness wasn't as important as whether the rain clouds rolled over our pastures and added a few drops of moisture to the scant readings of the week before.

After the winds died, the electricity stayed off all over town. So we moved onto the coolness of the front porch in time for a string of cars to pass by leading to the school gymnasium one half block away. The motorcade sounded a concert of the pistons of idling motors hacking a metallic tune and squat race cars' mufflers rumbling the mating call of the young male drivers, enforced by boom boxes drumming a hollow beat.

Accustomed to the fervor of the sports programs running summer and winter in Mertzon, we supposed a candlelight basketball game was on tap. But in the glow of headlights, our attention was focused on a couple of white objects high in the oak tree in front of the house. Once a spotlight from a car parked on the school lot flashed strong enough to give us a quick glimpse, yet too fast to identify the mysterious objects.

Two neighborhood pooches loose on the town from a storm-torn fence solved the mystery. The two dogs freed to roam and be a public nuisance identified "the white objects" as two kitties that had blown up into the high branches of the oak tree. Wind whipping around my two-story house had floated the cats airborne into the upper reaches of the tree. Not a helicopter or fixed-wing craft made that can make a landing as short and smooth as a cat. All that was needed for the feat was room for the cat to lift off and a limb to land upon. ("Pine Cone" Elkins, the owner of the Mertzon coffee house, disputes that cats can be airlifted in a storm, but her trust has been severely tested by hearing the same stories from her customers every morning six days a week.)

My sister keeps cats in her Angelo townhouse. Also runs 30 head in her backyard at the ranch on a slow season. But it'd take a mighty powerful wind to use her cats for an experiment, as she keeps them so fat the closest they come to flying, or even moving, is when her neighbor's sheepdog comes for a visit.

Turned out the traffic to the school was from a police report that the roof on the gym had blown off, causing $70,000 worth of damage. (In Mertzon we make on-the-spot estimates of a disaster, because so much of our lives are a disaster, i.e. losing football games to old rivals, losing opponents we can beat to the six-man league, bait stand closing on weekends, grocery store running short of varied flavors of Blue Bell ice cream, etc.) No wonder so many cars were coming by and spotlights flashing up the gym wall. If the roof had caved in on the gym floor, the town would have plunged into a funk too dark for the coming of the Oprah Winfrey show to revive.

The electricity came on at 3 a.m. The big fat dog stopped barking at the kittens at dawn. Her mate slacked off about seven or seven-thirty. I finished a novel at around eight to signal the end of the vigil on the dog and cat show. The cats were down from the oak tree and at the back door by mid-day. As expected, not a hair was out of place on either cat. It sure would have been a sight to have glimpsed those two, hair fluffed in full wing, flying through the air as graceful as feathered birds.

June 27, 2002