STORM TRACK: July 31, 1985 (Volume 8 Issue 5)

The last Storm Track prompted several more stories of chase experiences from readers, which are included in this edition. The Editor is very grateful for these and all submissions. Your accounts make up the "news" in the newsletter, which is what ST is all about. Its popularity reflects your input. Whatever I add, whether grouping like accounts, editing the text, or illustration, cannot even begin until your dramatic, interesting and amusing contributions are received. Thanks again.

Basically, this issue is a continuation of the last one and wraps up April's storm experiences. However, colorful and varied as they were, one of the many recollections that returns to me is a somewhat, curious and somber one that, in contrast, underscores the good fortune of those who do what we do. Between memories of the hum of tires on racing pavement and magnificent cloud towers, ever beaconing the eager chaser, are those occasional -almost haunted- images of small towns passing by, farm-lean and business-poor; slowly and sadly drying up. Most disquieting are the even more meager outskirts of these small communities, where an old man or woman sits on a shaded porch of a patched and peeling three room house, silently watching the wheeled world whiz by ... with only their legs to move them unsteadily from home to store to home. Failed farmers, lonely widows and their working children, growing up through constant struggles and too soon old. One memory, especially, of a small, muddy stucco house in west Texas where I still recall the old woman on a porch chair, with soiled apron, who turned her head as I drove by after 400 miles of chasing nothing but clouds, while she sat contemplating her next meal or just curious about the next town down the road ... the road just in front of her door (to everywhere), which she would likely never travel. --- Curious and disquieting, but worth our note lest we forget the quirks of fate in this short life -- this brief flicker in Time.