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Jamie Hall Mr. Neuburger Eng. Comp 101-130 5 March 2012 Descriptive Essay A Tornado in My Hometown My hometown is such a peaceful small town nestled in the Ozark Mountains, a place like any other small town in America. Everybody knows your name and re when you were sixteen wild as a mustang, thinking you were the greatest beer bottle pitcher that there ever was. People in my small town ask how your family is, and they gather for wedding and funerals because everyone is connected like a giant beautiful garden. We have a square like most small towns and, settled in the middle, is the courthouse the place where the old-timers gather and talk about times gone by. The stories those old bricks could tell would probably fill the library even though the county jail is bigger than the match box sized library. The courthouse is the place where few people get married, a place where you answer for any wrong doings You can bet if any wrong doings are done the whole town will know because news travels faster than the newspaper can print it. My hometown is a town of families that have been there since the beginning. It’s the town that growing up you cannot wait to leave but as you grow older you cannot wait to get back to. Major crime is unheard of; the most exciting thing that happens there is one of the traffic lights does not work. Until one day in late February, then all that changed in a few horrifying minutes.
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A murder was committed, homes were burned, and other homes were broken into. People suffered in agonizing pain as their whole world was torn apart. A tornado ripped through my hometown. The devastation looked like a freight train had torn through the small peaceful town. Pieces of homes were scattered like a child had thrown down their toys. Pieces were thrown everywhere with no mind where they landed or who they landed on and houses broken apart like a house of cards. Frames from mobile homes twisted around trees like they were a piece of rope, cars and trucks tossed down like match box cars. Families were uprooted from their homes so quickly. These people lost everything with many escaping with just the clothing they were wearing. Some were still in the hospital healing from the physical wounds and trying to heal from the emotional wounds. A mother gone from her family for good, she died protecting her child, a boy of fifteen, who is now crippled for life. He will never be the active child again, as he can only go as fast as his walker will allow. A young mother, eighteen years old and pregnant now has eight fractures in her spine, all done with no second thought to the consequences. My children were so close to the devastation. My heart twisted in horror as the weatherman spewed out a tornado had just hit three miles south of town. No one answered their phones, and my soul was crying out for my children. Praying to God that they are safe, finally an answer came. My daughter crying out for me, with sirens blaring in the background drowning out all thought. The relief washed over me like a waterfall. The landscape littered with fences tore down; barns ripped apart, horses running free, and cows bawling like lost children. I drove around in shock and thinking this happens in other towns not my hometown.
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We began cleaning up a mess that belonged to no one yet belonged to everyone. Finding family pictures from families that had lost everything, put them up someone may look for them. The lives of these families will forever be changed. My hometown pulled together during this horrifying time. Neighbors and sworn enemies worked together to clean up the mess and tried to help the families collect what they can so they can start their lives over again. A week from now no one will even know that once a trailer park with twenty trailers stood there, and instead it will just look like another open field in rural Dallas County just no cows grazing there. Ten years from now nobody outside of my hometown will even that a tornado had even been through there. Maybe someday the people of my town will forget that it ever happened, but I doubt it.