Faith, Hope, Fraternal Visitation, and the Terrible Beauty of the Storm

Tanscript:Faith, Hope, Fraternal Visitation, and the Terrible Beauty of the StormBeneath a black sky devoid of stars and bereft of moon we pointed the truck north and set out for home. If all went well, my good friend who is also my good Brother, and I would be back at our respective homes in just over an hour. Our journey began some six hours earlier. I stifled a yawn.“Brother Hank, how is your son doing?” Mike asked conscious perhaps of my apparent weariness.“Doing fine. He is a good boy,” I said.“How old is he now?”We talked a while about pleasant things - that helped pass the time. Ahead, regular bolts of lightning illuminated a cumulonimbus cloud, relatively narrow from my vantage point but a towering structure and directly ahead.My companion talked about the evening, mutual friends and acquaintances, and our shared Masonic experiences. I appreciated his being there. Long drives are always better when undertaken in good company.More bolts of lightning flashed gold, lighting white clouds otherwise invisible in the dark and I found myself taken back in time to other drives undertaken in stormy weather…By the time I was eight years old, I’d been driving the tractor for three years. Mostly but, not always supervised. When I turned eight Momma decided it was time for me to learn to drive properly. In those days she had a silver Mustang II, a stick shift.The first time I recall being in the driver’s seat of that car it was parked in the shade of a great oak in front of our home. I was much too small to be able to both reach the pedals AND see over the dashboard. Momma worked to adjust the seat forward. Having moved it all the way in that directiion, there was no help for it, I just couldn’t manage to both actuate the pedals, particularly the clutch, AND see over the steering wheel.Given these significant obstacles to success I imagined that first driving lesson was over – to be postponed until I was a bit taller but, such was not the case!“You sit right here while I go get something. Don’t you move,” Momma said. As she spoke, I heard something like frustration in her voice and saw a look of determination on her face. She disappeared into the house only to reappear moments later with a pillow in her hand and a look of pleased anticipation on her face.“Raise up,” she instructed. I did so and Momma put the pillow under my backside. “Okay, sit back down and try again.”I did as she instructed but alas, it was not enough. I could either manage the pedals OR I could see out the front glass but could not do both at the same time.“Hang on,” Momma said. Again she ran inside. When she re-emerged from the house, she carried a second pillow.In a moment it was stacked atop the first and I sat upon the both. “How about now?”Beginning to be frustrated I tried to reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel, prepared to report failure. To my delighted surprise I now sat semi-comfortably in the driver’s seat of the car able to both work the pedals AND with just a little effort, see out the glass – at the same time.“I can do it. I can work the pedals and see over the steering wheel,” I gleefully reported.“Alright!” Momma was very pleased.We worked out how to shift the transmission, first, second, third, fourth, reverse, that one was a little tricky but pretty soon eight year old me seemed to have it. Before long I knew how to start the car and nominally understood braking.“Ready?” Momma asked.“Heck yeah!” I all but shouted. Exhilaration coursed through my small frame as the car successfully started. The motor revved in time with my pulse. “I am about to be driving a car,” I thought and was wildly exuberant with the sense of excited power that made itself known to my young nervous system.At this point, you may be asking, Hank, I thought you were thinking back to a time that you drove in a storm and yet there is not description here of inclement weather.I looked at Momma for approval. She smiled and nodded encouragingly. At her signal I engaged the clutch, depressed the brake, shifted the transmission into reverse, turned my body to look backwards as she’d described and realized, much too late, and to my great horror, that no matter how many pillows I sat upon I simply was not tall enough to manage the pedals while also turning my much too young body around to look behind me in order to safely reverse.My feet came off the pedals and I watched in absolute panic as the car sped backwards into the white wood fence that wrapped around our yard. Upon impact, two sixteen foot sections of that fence fell upon the ground. The car died and Momma said something that I am pretty sure she must have learned from Granny Alice who was the most prolific user of that kind of language I’d ever known in my young life.My first thought was of my very good father, “Dub” and his inevitable displeasure when he arrived home and discovered the fence.You see, not all storms are atmospheric in nature.One my suppose that with such an ending to my first driving lesson that similar, ongoing lessons might be curtailed. In such supposition, one would be mistaken. Having weathered the initial storm, my driving instruction continued under Momma’s careful supervision.By the time I was ten years old I found myself driving – ALONE - all over Beautiful, East Texas! Momma had a 1968 Buick Electra. It was twenty-one-and-a-half-feet-long, brown, made entirely of steel, and all electric. In the intervening two years since my first driving lesson I’d grow a lot. Seeing over the steering wheel was a non-issue and poor Dub, being no fool, wisely choose to purchase automatics over stick shifts for Momma to continue my illicit driving lessons.On a particular occasion, Momma sent me on an errand. “I want you to take this to your Granddad and Granny’s house. You can visit a while, if you like, then come on home.”“Yes ma’am,” I said.In no time I was behind the wheel of Momma’s Brown Buick Electra and headed down the Farm to Market road towards my grand parents home. The sky was dark gray. Rain began to fall soon after I began the trip.Beautiful, East Texas is on the southern border of what is often referred to as, “Tornado Alley.” There is rarely ever a gentle rain there. Instead, at least in those days, rain tended to come on fast and hard. Certainly there were lingering storms on occasion but, for the most part, the weather was tempestuous: sudden, usually violent, and often devastating. Or, as we liked to refer to it in Beautiful, just normal.The sky continued to darken, particularly in the west. This was usual and not unexpected as weather in Beautiful, East Texas generally moves from west to east.Momma’s enormous brown Buick Electra was a wonderfully comfortable luxury car. Heavy, its weight lent a feeling of safety in its operation. The wind began to pick up and as it did so, began also to gust, even violently. When I felt the wind shifting that heavy Buick, my ten year old self sensed danger and I grew cautious.The rain began to pour down in such tremendous volume that the wipers, even set to high, could not keep up with the deluge. I slowed the car, put on the headlights, and even engaged the emergency flashers in order that I might be more easily seen, though I’d observed no other cars on that rural route. Still the storm strengthened. So much so that I could no longer see the yellow line on the road. Indeed to my horror, I realized I could not see the front end of the hood of the car nor even the back end of the turtle hull when I looked in the back facing mirror.With this shocking recognition I quickly pulled Momma’s Buick entirely off the road and onto the grass as there was no paved shoulder. I had to open the door to even see where the grass was and torrential rain poured in upon me as I did so. Finally, feeling confident that no part of her car remained on the road, I closed the car back up and looked out the front glass.Fear mingled with frank astonishment swept over me as I realized the storm was of such intensity that I could not see any part of the outside world beyond the fury of the water pouring out of the sky and onto the glass that was all that separated me from apparent oblivion.Though still late afternoon, the sky was entirely black. White water broke upon every window of the car and was all that could be seen. No other trace of the outside world, not so much as a hint, no not even a sliver of brown could be discerned and I knew that I was that real danger stalked me that day.All that was – was chaos. The storm’s veil fell entirely upon me there. There was no world, no earth beyond the interior of the car. The storm raged. Lightning flashed almost strob-like, and thunder exploded again and again and again beginning anew before the last explosion ended. The car shook and shimmied, despite its thousands of pounds in the storm’s fury. And in the black of it lit only by the awful flashing lightning I heard a frightful roar such that tears filled my eyes for fear of imminent mortality.A 1968 Buick Electra was a car of such proportion as to be nearly unrelatable to today’s vehicles. It was truly a giant of a car and would require most of four contemporary parking places to properly park from front to back and still leave room to open both the driver’s and passenger doors. Similarly, the inside of the car was cavernous.Fearing the storm that savagely raged outside that protective frame of steel and glass, grounded only by the rubber tires that supported it, I determined to seek help from on high. What had been only a car moments before became a chapel, a cathedral, a temple and in that sacred space, I knelt upon the vinyl front bench seat and there poured my heart, soul, and very real fear out to the Creator of All That Is.My prayer may have been only that such as a ten year old boy is capable of but it mattered little for my faith was every bit of what a ten year old boy is also capable of and more than exceeded a vocabulary limited by youth and inexperience. As I knelt there praying I wept for fear of the storm. The Almighty had compassion on His creation and, in time, the storm diminished just a little.As it did so, I opened my eyes and saw the brown hood of the car but no more. The curtain of rain receded and I began to see the road and grass, both covered by a flood of water. That awful veil drew back a bit more.To my unmitigated horror I saw the tornado.The black funnel rose from the earth and reached into the heavens. Crossing the Farm to Market road not more than a hundred yards ahead of me it traveled from my left to my right. In its debris field I saw road signs, trees, whole trees, parts of what once was a house, what appeared to be a horse trailer, and heaven help me, I even saw what was left of a horse, perhaps a matched set that belonged to the trailer.The monster moved slowly so slowly. I felt the car yearning to come up off the ground and enter its orbit and begged God to prevent it. The car actually moved forward, though it was not running and I prayed, nearly shouting for my Creator to send his angels to hold it in place.I think he must have done so. I cannot otherwise explain how neither I nor Momma’s Buick did not become one with that awful beast of a storm. I can only say that I am grateful beyond measure that we did not.Back again in the present I realized my friend and Brother Mason must have asked me a question and politely waited for an answer. “Sorry Brother Mike, what did you say?”“I was just asking if you enjoyed the evening,” he said.“Brother, I enjoyed it very well. More than you know. It has been a gift. I must thank the Worshipful Master for inviting me,” I said.Ahead of us, lightning again lit the cumulonimbus structure. “You are beautiful to behold,” I thought, “But I do not fear you are only beautiful and we are not back in Beautiful.”Much Love,HankYou’ve Been HankedThanks for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. These stories are true stories. They are my stories and I love sharing them with you. If you appreciate what you’ve heard I hope you’ll give it a like, make a comment, and subscribe. If you find this work worthy of your material support, an option for a paid subscription is available. Regardless of anything else, thanks so much for being here and for listening. Talk to you again next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hankgriffin.substack.com/subscribe