The old photo that I am using this week was made the morning after the tornado that came through Aubrey on a Sunday night just after the three church services had ended some eighty-five years ago. The three churches involved in the tornado that disastrous night were the Methodist church along with the Christian Church and the Baptist Church. The Methodist and Christian church buildings were completely destroyed and the remains were nothing more than splinters of what was large timber and good lumber in well built structures. The Baptist Church building was not damaged. This building still stands today. I suspect that the Baptist church, even though it was a well-built structure was not any better constructed than the other two buildings that were destroyed. The great mysteries of just how a tornado can leap across town and pick up buildings, move over buildings and destroy some and not even touch or damage a building sitting next to it, are still hard to accept even when we have the forecasts of today. The potential damages of a tornado’s powers are great.

All of this recorded destruction makes us wonder when another great power can sweep down and do similar damages again, and we can marvel too about just how fortunate we are that we have survived thus far. The number of survivors of that storm that live today is a small group and few are left that recall this event. Most of the recollections that are mentioned today are from what our parents and grandparents told us about this storm. My Mother would find time to get all of my brothers and sisters together at night. We would huddle around in a small circle at her feet and listen with great interest, many times it was in the dark with no lamps; our eyes adjusted to the night moonlight and the stars. She would tell us stories about our ancestors and things that had happened in her past. This was a very important time in our childhood, and we find that many of those stories still linger in our minds as we recall stories of the past. My Mother was especially good at telling the adventurous stories of things that happened when she was a youth, and stories that her Mother Ina Doza Jones had told to her family of seven boys and three girls.

I recall that the stories were part of the rewards of the day, if we didn’t act like good kids during the day and perform our daily chores, we would be deprived of the nightly stories. When we had to go through a long dark night without any stories, made us think about doing our assignments for school and at home in the future, because our lives were dull without the nightly stories.

One such story that we especially enjoyed was about the night during April of 1918 when she was staying with her sister, Mae Caddell in a house two doors down the road to the east of the Methodist Church on the same side of the street. My Dad, Jim Goin, was in the army and was stationed in Florida during training during World War I.

It was a benefit for my mother to spend time with Aunt Mae; she was helping with the three young Caddell children that were named James, Leon and Lucy Mae. Lucy Mae is the only survivor of this family today. She was only a few months old when this storm hit. My Mother saw the Methodist Church, which was only a few hundred feet away, picked up by the storm and made into splinters. They had just returned from the church service where my Aunt Sis, Lillian Goin, was the organist. The organ was always moved in a wagon from the church to the home of Wood and Laura Goin, my grandparents (the house is where Jackie and I now live). The organ was moved for each service and was either at home or in the church. They kept it in the home available to Aunt Sis so that she could practice for the next service. This organ is still in my home today and occupies a place of prominence in our large living room.

One of the most rewarding facts of the storm is that everybody survived the flying debris with the exception of a few chickens and other small animals. My oldest sister Ina L. Jones remembers how our mother described how the feathers were plucked off the chickens and the chickens were left bare with nothing to keep them warm. The naked chickens survived.

The photo was made by Uncle Ed Jones. He crawled to the top of the IOOF building and captured this event with his camera. If you can visualize, the center of this photo and to the left of the two remaining wooden structures with the roof damage, you will see the location of where the City Hall stands today. Even during 1918, very few cars are seen in this photo. Buggies were the primary method of transportation.