We were doing evening living room things—us kids playing our favorite game, Flapper Smacking—while mom sewed bodybags for the boys overseas and Dad read the paper. Then, Dad looked out the window and raised his eyebrows, the warning to us all like an air raid drill.

The sky outside had turned a frightening Prince-colored purple. It had grown darker and darker by the second, a terrible foreboding like a fat man in a dark suit walking on a miniature Lego city, which I think is hilarious. I’m cracking up just thinking about it. But this storm coming on quick was no laughing matter. It was a peeing-your-pants matter.

‘To the underground shelter!’ shouted Dad, then ran ahead of us outside to the tornado cellar. We all followed, except Goose, who was getting out his kite and running out to meet the storm like Captain Ahab meeting his whale.

We all climbed inside and Dad barricaded the entrance with wood and nails. We told him it wasn’t necessary, but he said tornadoes were sneaky enough to undo mere latches and closed doors. He also said tornadoes were taking all the American jobs and had murdered good Americans at the Alamo.

We survived the tornado, of course, but I spent years carrying confusing stereotypes about Hispanics and tornadoes around, thanks to Dad’s lack of education.”

“Tornado”

Invisible
In a panic I clenched my eyes shut, and to my surprised delight heard my mother searching around the house, asking “Where’s Sampson?” and “Have you seen Sampson?” while I invisibly ran out to the back yard and hid inside a discarded tire.

Poems
It started out something like, ‘I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree.’ Well, needless to say, that turned me off to poetry right away.

Cheese
There was a time in my life I was convinced I could get a job endorsing a product. I was about 15, I think, relatively young, and had enough gusto to think I could do anything. In retrospect I should have tried to promote gusto, that I could’ve sold, before gusto went out of style back in the late ‘50s.