Maude's Hope: Against the Storm

A serious minded Maude at left.

Twisters are a part of life across the  flat fields and prairies of  North Texas, and the residents take it all in stride, except for a long ago introspective child named Maude Terry. Within any darkened sky, the little girl watched for dark funnels of destruction, as  hail  plummeted  the tin roof of the tiny frame house in open field. She waited for disaster, certain it would come.

In Spring,  an occasional  black wedge pointed a deadly finger to the earth and morphed into the  mindless monster ...something almost alive in its  intensity. No one is left to tell us what  Maude  may have experienced, but I am certain the dread of  twisters plagued Maude for many years.You see I came to know her as my mother's great aunt many years later when I was a small child.


By the time I came along, Maude was married to Hope Gill,  her second husband, and had moved south to Deep East Texas. She and Hope settled down next door to be near our family  in a little community springing up around the Southland  Paper Mill.  The Gills' marriage was an idyllic union. Hope  gave Maude security, and she provided him with a   home filled with lace doilies and doo-dads, waxed floors and a pantry filled with canned vegetables from the garden .

 In her later years, Maude was like a little bird who had forgotten its song and never learned  to soar. Standing well under five feet tall,  quiet and quick , she was the exact opposite of Hope who was lumbering and boisterous....a Major Hoople type.  Hope was confident and aggressive, while  Maude was  serious and restrained. Yet both were alike in their love for children and treated Joe and me with affection. We loved to visit  their sunny little kitchen which often provided freshly churned ice cream. If I was shy about accepting a dish of it,  Hope would set things straight: "Better have some ice cream, little gal. It'll make you purty!" How could I refuse?

Each week, Mother sent brother Joe over to buy fresh eggs from Maude, who was able to provide herself with a little mad money compliments of  productive hens. One giant white chicken  decided to follow me home. I gave it the predictable name of Henny Penny.It became my own special pet and followed me about. Ours was a happy alliance with the relatives next door, and all was peaceful...for awhile any way.

Maude's tornado watch never ended. A sudden thunder storm or  straight wind would cause her to scan the sky and warn  the neighbors: "Storm's a'coming!"
She would run back home to keep her eagle eye on our roof top television  antenna  as it swayed in the wind. If ever it was askew, she would trot over  to tell us in her tremulous voice. My father would patiently cajole her by saying she need not fear, that  he was aware of it. She appeared to be disappointed in his lack of  concern.Yes indeed, wind fired Maude  up like  nothing else . It was as if the violence of storms sparked a primitive  part of her inner being. Sometimes it seemed  a funnel cloud whirled up from within her tiny body,.from somewhere deep and dark.

  Maude finally hit a home run with her emergency weather bulletins. That was the day Daddy   loaded us up in the Chevy  in an attempt to outrun  some suspicious dark mass in the sky. He drove as fast as he could safely do so, as Joe and I stared out the back window fearing a make- believe monster that suddenly dissipated.  It was  such a disappointment.  I don't know how far we traveled,  but we  came home late to business as usual. The house still stood, and the garage, which  leaned, had done so  for awhile any way.  I  wished there had been at least a moderate disaster, maybe a few limbs down, anything to make my father's wild journey less embarrassing . Although I could not see Mother's face in the front seat, I remember the sound of barely contained laughter. Aunt Maude was having a maddeningly merry effect on her great niece, much to my father's consternation.

Maude's surprise in-person weather updates built to a crescendo  before  we got a proper bathroom. Privacy was difficult to achieve when the only place you had to bathe was   an aluminum wash tub set on the linoleum floor in the kitchen. It was tricky to say the least. We never knew when Maude would charge over to rattle the back screen door that  led to the kitchen/make-do bath to deliver her  weather reports. Sometimes my father barely escaped being caught racing from the bath water.


Something had to be done. Finally, Hope Gill saved the day. He decided to take matters in his own beefy hands. Before the next Spring,  he set out to dig  a huge wide hole in the Gill's back yard. Enough was enough. Maude was  wreaking havoc with her obsession.  He decided to provide Maude  with the safe haven and sense of security she craved. It was a fine thing. Yes, indeed.  Hope Gill was going to build his little wife a storm cellar.

Now everyone knew Hope was no builder. I 'm sure he had help with the concrete room that was to be Maude's underground shelter, but he doggedly  stayed right with it. The project brought to mind the time Hope worked on their garage roof and fell through. I witnessed the entire event. There was a loud crack of the framing and a loud PLOP! when the big man hit ground. I heard his desperate screams as Maude rushed outside  to help lift him up. Considering his inept history,  everyone around the paper mill wondered how  Hope was  going to  finish such a remarkable achievement as a storm cellar. The neighborhood was abuzz the day construction began.

Nevermind the naysayers. Hope was on an inspired mission, and the shelter was finally finished without incident.Trouble was, it was never used for its intended purpose. The refuge became a fabulous  hiding place  for me. I can still smell the acrid aroma of cement and visualize the  shelves loaded with Maude's  canned goods and emergency supplies. I may have been the only one who  found a purpose for that underground room. Yet just knowing it was there seemed to give Maude a sense of safety she had never had. I guess that's all she really wanted.

 I am sure there are those who thought Hope was a fool, but he paid no attention.  There were a few   shelters in Deep East Texas, and no one  else in our neck of the woods had thought it necessary to build one. Everyone knew tornadoes were scarce in the Pineywoods, and mild when they did touch down. Yet Hope was strong in his resolve, and Maude was happy. The pep in her step returned, her ice cream maker churned away, and peace returned to our house too.

Long after I grew up and left home, I was told that Hope had passed away. They found him propped against a big shade tree on the banks of the Trinity River, fishing pole clutched in his hand,  eyes closed peacefully, a smile on his face. From bits and pieces heard here and there, I learned that Maude had begun to lose her grip on reality with the passing of her Faithful Protector. Mother found her wandering  the roads, trying to get to the grocery store and  picked her up and took her there in the car.

"I just wanted to get me some candy," she whispered peevishly as she clutched her coins tied up in a starched white handkerchief.

 Mother found her along the road on a hot summer day in a state of frustration. When  asked  what was wrong, she  announced " I was trying to go to church, but  nobody was there, and I was locked out! "
Mother  explained that it was not a regular day for worship services, unruffled her feathers and brought her home.Sometimes I think Maude  lost her compass when Hope died. Finally,  our special friend and relative passed on to a place where there were no more dark clouds, no more worries.

Decades passed, and the old storm cellar became obscured by overgrowth, and  its wooden door rotted away. New folks moved into the neighborhood, and no one knew it was ever there. But I remembered. For it was I who  made use of its underground depths when the world above was off kilter. It was I who knew what it really represented. After all was said and done,  that old cellar was a cement monument, one man's tribute to the love  of  his life. Maybe that was all it needed to be.