cbellomy

I was halfway to writing a defense of keeping it, mindful how close the county courthouse came to demolition when it was this age, when I asked myself if anything particularly historic had ever happened in that building, or if it somehow played a big part of life in Fort Worth during its time with us. That's when it hit me that this is a building that most FWers never even see except when they actually go there. It's completely isolated from the thriving parts of downtown. Not only is the brutalist design discouraging of interaction, the entire land use around it has rendered it almost invisible in our civic life.

Start over, try again.

Rangoon Racquet Club's strongest connection to immortality may be as the last stop for Stan Farr and Priscilla Davis before they went home the night of August 2, 1976...

I'm already on record in this thread lamenting this loss of this beauty. If I were to pick five demolitions that hurt DTFW the most, they would be

1. Medical Arts
2. Old Post Office / Federal building
3. Aviation Building
4. Continental National Bank rotating clock (don't care much about the building underneath, the clock made the building important)
5. Worth Hotel

Otherwise, I think that losing the M&O Subway was unbelievably tragic. When we lose the confluence of the West and Clear Forks of the Trinity below the bluff, that will pretty much cement our municipal disrespect for our own history, won't it? Does it get any more fundamental than that?

Well, truthfully, I think the folks who were in Reata when the tornado hit have a much scarier tale to tell than mine. They could see the thing coming. I didn't know what it was until the suck zone had already passed me, though I did start thinking about how much I wanted to see my kid again before that.

The tornado I rode out in 1968 was worse. My grandparents had a farm about eight miles west of Newcastle, Texas (west of Graham on Highway 380 in Young County); my brothers (age 18 and 11 at the time) and I (age 3) took a trip into town to get some milk and groceries. On our way back, a hammerhead cloud on our way in had morphed into a rotating monster. We crossed the Brazos on the old narrow bridge still there at the time and within seconds got swept off the road, spinning, until the back of our '64 Buick was slammed into a mesquite tree. I was in the back seat and the rear window shattered into beads all over me, but none of us were hurt.

Now that was scary.

I really don't want to ride through a third one. I hear that those are the charm.

Do I remember where I was? Oh yeah. I remember.

The morning of 3/28/2000, I bought a new car, a blue Acura TL that I loved. Then I headed east to my job at the Infomart in Dallas. As I was preparing to leave, I checked the radar on the web and saw that a tornado warning had a hook echo in the Saginaw area, heading east toward NRH and Hurst. "No worries," I thought, "I'll just take I-30 or I-20 back to FW anyway."

However, as I was heading out of the Infomart parking lot around 6:25 or 6:30, my cell phone got a text message: a new tornado warning about an actual tornado sighting in downtown FW. The projected path of this one was due east down the I-30 corridor. "OK," I thought, "I'll head down to I-20 and get home that way." Headed down US 67 in Dallas, I checked the flagship station of the local Emergency Alert System, WBAP-AM 820. They had the Dallas Stars game on (from the east coast, I guess, or else it was pregame). I figured everything must have been relatively ok so I popped a CD in and settled in for the drive.

On I-20 in Grand Prairie, passing over Great Southwest Parkway, I noticed that an incredible electrical storm was happening in front of me in Arlington. (By now it was fully dark aside from the lightning.) I was 34 years old then and had never seen such intense lightning. Traffic flowed normally, though, until the rain started getting heavy shortly after crossing Texas 360. I kept moving about 40 mph, passed under the New York Avenue overpass, then traffic came to a halt a few hundred yards later.

The rain was now falling Texas style, from left to right. No big deal, just a squall, I'll ride it out.

Hmm. This wind is still picking up. It's throwing dirt at my car! Dangit, my new car... probably already all scratched up. My luck.

Wow, this is really getting bad. The car is starting to rock from the wind, the loose debris is just pummeling the driver's side of my car. This... this isn't good. Now I'm getting nervous.

Then... *poof*. The wind stops. I mean, STOPS. Cold. Total fury and sound, then nothing. Silence.

Then... *bam*. Just like that, the wind is back and the car is getting buffeted/pelted again. Only this time it's coming from the passenger side.

Oh. Damn. I was just in the freaking suck zone of a freaking TORNADO!

I then scrambled to pull up WBAP on the radio again. They were covering the mayhem downtown as the wind slowly abated and traffic started to move again. The lady in front of me had a traffic barrel on her hood she had to remove first. A semi about 100 yards ahead of me in the right lane had been blown over. I didn't know it yet, but a light standard not far behind me had blown down across the highway. All those people behind me wouldn't be going anywhere for a few hours.

Then the tones of the Emergency Alert System come on 'BAP. "The National Weather Service in Fort Worth has detected a tornado in the vicinity of I-20 and Collins in South Arlington." I look up at the overpass I'm going under. It's South Collins.

NOW YOU TELL ME?! YOU PEOPLE ARE USELESS!!! I was highly stressed and not a bit happy. To say the least.

I finally got home I don't know when, probably 25 minutes after riding through a tornado, pulse still racing. I didn't sleep well for at least three days after. I did watch the TV coverage of all the damage and mayhem for several hours and counted myself lucky to have made it home unscathed.

My new car, though, wasn't so lucky. The scratches to the paint were all over the car. I also lost a wheel cover. Yay for insurance.

So now I've been in two tornadoes in a car. The first one totaled my parents' '64 Buick, but neither hurt me. I guess I really am lucky.