Springfield, Mass., was walloped by a tornado yesterday. Although I presently live in Maryland, this tornado hit home for me. I grew up in Springfield, and when my sister emailed me that the windows of Cathedral High School were blown out, I thought, "Wow, that's only a few blocks from the house." The house I grew up in, that is. And Cathedral is right next to my old elementary school.
Since then, I've been reading the damage reports. The photos of the devastation throughout Springfield were the most compelling. When I saw a photo of an overturned truck across the Connecticut River in West Springfield, I didn't need to read the caption to identify the Rt. 5 location. I recognized the electric company at the edge of the photo.
To have a tornado strike a place you know so intimately and read about it in the news is totally unlike reading about a tornado in some place that was never home.
When I read about the funnel cloud spinning around by the bus station, I couldn't help but remember all the times I'd gone to that bus station to board the bus to Boston, where I attended college.
The woman who was trapped in a house on 124 Arcadia Blvd., as reported by the Republican, was only a handful of houses from my own childhood home. The short street I lived on connected to the end of Arcadia Boulevard containing #124. Her house wasn't there during much of my childhood. That tract was woods until a developer came in and built that house and a few others as I approached adolescence.
A car was crushed by a tree on the corner of Allen Street and Island Pond Road -- that's where I stood and waited each morning for that old green city bus that took me to high school. A photo showed a tree uprooted at the corner of Allen and Wheeler just blocks from there.
WWLP's list of street closings cinched the feeling that the tornado hit home:
Plumtree Road impassable -- that's where I went to church as a kid.
Parker Street from Wilbraham Road to Cooley Street closed -- that was my friend Linda's neighborhood, and my junior high school was right around the corner.
Island Pond Road from Allen Street to Roosevelt, no-go -- hey, this is too close for comfort. I lived just one house in from Island Pond Road along this stretch!
I moved far away a long time ago. Springfield is no longer where I live. When my father died, we sold the house I grew up in. Still, when Wednesday's tornado devastated places so permanently fixed in my growing-up memories, it hit home.
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