An Ill Wind

 I think it was Shakespeare who said, "Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good."  Wouldn't it have been more grammatically correct for him to have said, "Tis and ill wind that blows nobody well."?  One thing for sure, he got the "blowing" part right.

I saw on the news the other day that Chicago was hit by a tornado.  I don't remember that ever happening within the city limits.  People used to say that the lake protected us but, that doesn't make sense to me because tornadoes usually come from the west, don't they?  

I remember the Oak Lawn tornado of 1967.  I had recently gotten out of the army and was on my way from my parent's home in Palos Park to visit a friend in the old neighborhood.  I was driving down South-West Highway and saw a traffic jam up ahead with police car lights flashing.  I figured there had been a wreck and turned down a side street to get around it.  A block or two in, there was a downed tree blocking the street, so I turned down another street to get around that.  Then it got confusing because the streets in that neighborhood weren't laid out in square blocks like they are in most of Chicago.   Finally, I came upon a man wearing a white Civil Defense helmet who flagged me down and told me that I wasn't supposed to be there.  I assured him that I wasn't there on purpose and would gladly leave if he would tell me how.  He gave me some directions and I arrived at my friend's house in short order.  It was only then that I found out that a tornado had plowed through Oak Lawn, jumped over Chicago, and fizzled out over Lake Michigan.  My Uncle Eddie in New Buffalo later told me that pieces of Oak Lawn were washing up on the beach all that summer.

As you can see, I figured out how to make my text skip a line.  The "enter" key, the "shift" key and the "backspace" key on this keyboard are not properly labeled, they just have little arrows on them, one pointing up and two pointing left.  Silly me, I had been pushing the wrong key.  Change sucks!