Stormy Weather

Back on June 1st of 2007, my niece was graduating from the Covenant School of Nursing in Lubbock, Texas. I decided to make the trip from Fort Worth to Lubbock with Shorty. Papa Rooster couldn't go because someone had to stay home to feed the hounds.

Shorty and I took Papa Rooster's truck. And instead of taking the freeway to Lubbock, I decided to take the back roads - the way my grandpa, a truck driver for Frozen Food Express, used to travel back and forth to his home town of Morton, Texas.

As you can see from the pictures below, we were driving on a two-lane road that had no shoulder. These pictures were taken before the bottom fell out:

It's starting to sprinkle in these pictures:

At this point, I'm driving, like, 90 miles an hour, trying to get through the storm.

Then it starts raining. Shorty was not the only one that was scared.

It was at this point I could not take pictures. I was scared - probably the most scared I have ever been. I could not see the road. The wind was blowing so hard. I came upon a little green sign. The sign read, Benjamin. I was so freaked out - I was talking to myself out loud. I read the Benjamin sign as "been jammin."

It's still pouring down rain. There's a van pulled over in a church parking lot. They flash their lights at me as if to say, Pull over. I pull over at the first covered spot I could find which happened to be a little bitty gas station. The building was like a trailer. There was a carport type thing that covered the gas pumps.

I pull up there and we sit and wait. The wind is blowing so hard that it literally picks up the back end of the pickup and moves it a little. The electricity goes out inside the store. I pull the truck forward a bit more, almost touching the building. There's, like, five other cars crammed under this carport thing. And just as quickly as it started, it's over and I have about 3 yards of car seat fabric to pull out of my butt.