homework

I have started taking a memoirs writing class, every Monday morning for six weeks, assuming the classes don't get cancelled. The first suggested topic was a storm so I decided to share with my blog readers.

Memoirs class 1.
The Twister - a storm story
Chickens are cute for one day.  When we first moved out to the little farm near Woodburn, where I grew up from third grade through high school, my mom and dad decided, since there were two chicken coops on the property, to go into the chicken raising business.  Thry both had other jobs but were inspired by a popular book of the Fifties called "Five Acres and Independence." 
Every twelve weeks, 1500 baby chicks were delivered to our freshly cleaned and sanitized coops.  Did you know that baby chicks come in boxes?  100 t0 a box. They were so cute, soft and fluffly and yellow. Within the week they were starting to feather, peck each other and generally develop nasty personalities.  Eleven weeks later they were big and plump, and sold for "fancy flock frier" prices. 
One hot July night when the current flock was about six weeks old, a thunderstorm blew up.  Lots of whistling wind, thunder, lightening, and scared chickens.  Chickens, when they are scared run to a corner of the coop and hide their heads.  Unfortunately, all the other chickens seem to think this is a great idea and  follow the leader.  Like lemmings with feathers.  Sadly, if you can't swiftly unstack the chickens, the ones on the bottom suffocate.  So my father spent several hours that evening unstacking chickens, then we all went to bed.
It was later that same night that the twister came through.  For some reason the chickens weren't upset by a small tornado zipping through the barnyard.  While we were sleeping the twister uprooted a large,old maple tree and blew an old, unused brooder house into the road.  The grey metal, clyindrical structure lay gently rolling back and forth in the road until a late night driver, who  had stayed too long at the local bar, swerved to miss the brooder house and landed in the ditch.  He woke the family by banging on the door to tell us that there was an elephant in the road.  My brother and I thought that this was all quite hilarious.  A tow truck was called and the police. They were not amused.