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Show RTVER I spent the next day fighting bad weather. It went from good to bad to worse, and I sought shelter in a laundromat in a small town called Metropolis. Its name-reflecting obviously failed hopes-gave the town a connection with Superman and cardboard cutouts of the hero hung from the metropolitan light posts. By late afternoon the weather had cleared so I hit the river again. Toward evening, I drifted under the highway bridge at Grafton when a scrawny old man with long hair waved me into shore. "There's a tornado warning out," he yelled. "You'd better get off the river." Dick showed me a shack he'd built in front of the river wall. The shack had no roof to speak of and positively no floor, so it hardly looked like the kind of place in which to pass a tornado, but Dick said I could use it as long as I wanted, gratis. After checking out the shack I decided I'd be better off out in the open and I set up my sleeping gear and my new tarp on some high weeds. As it got dark an eerie calm settled over the Ohio, warm and oppressive, and I sat in the shanty smoking and pondering my fate. Not long after dark a tremendous wind came shrieking down the river, followed by sheets of rain. Lightning began to fly and more than one bolt connected with the highway bridge, accompanied by rolling blasts of thunder. Rain was soon running in small rivers through the numerous holes in the shanty's roof while I sat mesmerized by the storm. The howling wind played the highway bridge like a lyre and sheets of lightning randomly illuminated the water-walled dark. Watching my first tornado left me stunned: I'd never imagined a storm of such ferocity. Running from the shanty to my bedroll left me soaked, but I was exhausted and climbed into the bag and went to sleep. In the morning a freshet of water ran down through the weeds alongside my bedroll, but the glory of the -148- |
