A dark December, indeed…

I turned 14 years old in the August of 1987, so I was old enough to be paying attention to the news that the tornado that tore a hole in West Memphis had left a path of destruction in its wake. I lived in Marion, though, and the distance between the two cities was greater back then, and thus didn’t really have any friends or family caught in the eye of the storm on December the 14th. My grandmother lived on Balfour, but thankfully, that end of town was largely spared any significant damage. That would actually be important to me and my family less than two weeks later, although I didn’t know it at the time.

But the damage to the area that was in the path of the tornado was extensive and it was indiscriminate. I remember driving around with my Dad and seeing some of the damage. I particularly remember heading to Memphis on a shopping trip to the Mall of Memphis (or it might have been the Southland Mall — I just remember it taking forever) and on the way, along the Interstate, you could see all of the shredded buildings and debris, particularly on the south side of the highway.

But like I said, it didn’t really impact me directly. I know that’s not the story for many folks that lived around here back then. There were a half-dozen fatalities, and many, many homes and businesses destroyed. Many of them have shared those stories, and I’m glad they did, but my story centers on the events that unfolded 10 days later, on Christmas Eve.

On the 24th of December in 1987, I was a teenage kid with computer games and such on my Christmas list. I had younger sisters, so I was still looking forward to a visit from Santa Claus the next morning. In fact, just to set the mood, there was a 3foot tall stuffed St. Nick standing next to the Christmas tree in the den.

We had gone to my Grandmother’s for a family get-together earlier in the day and that night knowing that even though it was a cold and rainy night, Santa’s sleigh would somehow make it to our house that night. My Mom was working that night as a shift manager at the Mapco service station. It’s long gone now, but I hear there’s an O’Reilly’s Auto Parts going in where it used to be, there along the Service Road in Marion. She was scheduled to be home at 6 a.m., in plenty of time for Christmas morning festivities. I ended up seeing her a lot sooner.

I’m not sure what time it was exactly, but after I’d been asleep for a little while, my Dad roused me from my slumber. He was telling me to get up and get dressed. “We gotta go,” he told me. I didn’t know why.

I soon found out why.

As I swung my legs around to get out of bed, I immediately knew something was wrong, because my feet were instantly wet. Not damp — under water, like up to the middle of my shins. It was dark. I don’t remember now if the power was out, or if my Dad had shut off the lights to keep us from getting electrocuted or what, but he had a flashlight and he was bustling about to collect me, my two sisters and the cat. He was also putting Christmas presents on top of the kitchen cabinets, along with the some other items. We put the big cabinet TV on top of the dining room table.

The water was rising, slow but steady, and I knew it was going to be a different kind of Christmas when that old stuffed Santa floated past me in the kitchen, face down, having drowned in the deluge, I guess.

Eventually, we all piled into my Dad’s car, which was a Chevy Citation, if I recall correctly, and definitely not designed for driving in flood waters, but it got him, me, my sisters (and the cat) down Henry Street, up the Service Road and into the decidedly- not- flooded Mapco parking lot.

We were not alone. There were carloads of folks there, and it was quite chaotic.

I don’t really remember a whole lot about the rest of the night. We ended up going to my Grandmother’s — the one whose house did not get damaged in the tornado — and we stayed there a few days. I do remember my Dad coming in with all the stuff we had gotten for Christmas and had been forced to leave behind as we evacuated. The water ended getting about two feet high in the house. Once the waters had receded, we pulled up all the carpet, ran fans to dry everything else out, and lived on concrete floors for a few months until the FEMAcheck came through. But on New Year’s Eve, we were back home, and except for the cold concrete floors, it was pretty much life as usual.

Until January when the blizzard came, anyway…

Ralph Hardin is Editor of the Evening Times and the Marion Ledger.

Ralph Hardin Times Editor