The Moose Lodge - Part 4, The Palm Sunday Tornado

Easter weekend of 1965 was one of those mile-stones in my life, one I’ll vividly remember. I was home from college on holiday, and dad hired me to help the janitor, Don Fewell, clean the building that Sunday. It was April 11, Palm Sunday. I left the house after dinner and drove Mom’s 1962 Chrysler Winsor, as it sat behind and blocked my 1950 Dodge truck. I got to the Moose about 6PM, parked in back, near the kitchen door. Don’s car was the only other on the lot.

We worked for several hours, Don in the bar area, while I swept and mopped the other end near the stage and dance floor. The folding doors that partitioned off the dining and poker area were open, so the building was one big long room from stage through to the poker area. It was partitioned off for Lodge meetings, Bingo, and special events, but usually, like that night, left open.

Don had tuned the radio to local WIOU. We worked to the sound of music, but kept getting an increasing number of weather updates - repeated warning of tornados moving in from the southwest. Don and I went to the front door to check toward the indicated direction. The wind was picking up; we could see fast moving clouds in a turbulent sky, but nothing to get alarmed about. We went back to work. I remember returning to check the weather several more times. The sun had set by 9pm, and the sky on the western horizon was bitch black. We could see the wind was getting even more active.

The radio reported a tornado sighting in Alto, a small farming community just two miles from us. Shortly thereafter we began hearing the wind from inside the building. Vent shudders in the ceiling began to flap open and shut in noisy rhythmic beats. The sound of the wind rose to an alarming pitch. Don and I, without agreement, walked toward each other, meeting in the dining area near the front. We stood between the two walls that jutted a short distance into the room. (“J” and “D” in the drawing). Both of us were transfixed as the noise became even louder. We stood looking into the room toward the bar area. There were large windows all around the building, big double pane ones nearly eight feet high. Glass doors stood right behind us. Through those doors could be seen the glass doors of the lobby, and then the glass front doors opening to the portico. We were looking through the windows along the wall behind the bar. We could see a big steel incendiary the lodge use for burning trash. It probably weighed a half ton. It suddenly lifted off the pad like a rocket heading for the moon, and then one of the big windows behind the bar exploded. Don and I both had the same thought, “Damn, that’s going to be a mess to clean up”. We were soon absolved of that chore as every window in the place began to crash as the storm moved inside.

Things suddenly got serious. The lights failed; the decibel level rose to that generated by freight trains; light fixtures swung violently; and the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. I grouched and then laid prone against the wall with my hands covering my head. I looked into the room to see ghostly silhouettes flying by. Don, to my right, was grouched in a semi-squat at the end of the other wall, holding on, but dangerously exposed - not doing well. The violence lasted only a few minutes - minutes of fear, exaltation, and wonder. I couldn’t help from looking into that wind tunnel of cascading debris. I didn’t even notice I’d been hurt.

GO TO: Part 5, The Tornado Aftermath