Night Before Black Friday

July 30, 1987 was shaping out to be a dilly of a storm. Around midnight the storm lit the sky for miles around.

I was a bit worried because my wife Edna finished her shift at the Lamont Hospital about the same time when the storm started acting up. I was in the kitchen cleaning eggs for market and there were a lot of them. At that time we could not wash the eggs for the egg grading station would not buy them so the job had to be done by using sandpaper. Back to the storm…

I heard a funny noise from down the basement. I went down to check and to see what was going on.

To my surprise, lightning had struck my phone that I used for my auctioneering business (which I could use anywhere on my auction site). Anyway the phone could no longer be used. The base was smashed and was under the chesterfield and the VCR also played for the last time. They say that is is very rare for lightning to strike the same person twice but I must say that was a close shave.

What I couldn’t understand was that we had lightning rods on the house and extra protection for the TV which wasn’t touched. Edna got home safely driving through the wicked storm.

BLACK FRIDAY

Summer fallowing had to be done, so I took my John Deere tractor and vibrashank and went to work on a quarter half a mile west of home. There was quite a few acres to do, so I started early in the morning before the rooster started crowing (about 6 am). To my recollection, it was a very hot, clear day with absolutely no breeze. Luckily, there was an air conditioner and a radio that was easy to use.

As the day progressed it began to get very humid and about 3:00 pm I noticed that the clouds were forming out west. I knew that a storm was shaping up because of how still and humid it had been.

I happened to finish the field, drove home, parked the tractor vibrashank in the yard and then walked to the house. That day I was alone.

Terry was working for Avco in Edmonton but he was living where the storm didn’t hit the hardest. Murray was working for Scona Pipe at that time. He was in their plywood office and I can’t for the life of me imagine that the tornado didn’t take that match box and send it to the next county. However, Murray’s truck got quite a beating. It cost the insurance company $2,500 to fix the dents and paint.

My nephew Jim (who owned the company) wasn’t at the office at that time. More than likely he was appraising coins for some banks or buying more pipe for his yard.

I can recall that Jim had a three legged dog. He was everybody’s friend but when the storm hit Scona, well that three legged dog was nowhere to be found.

He hid himself in one of those pipes and no one could call him out for quite awhile after the storm was over.

There was a large flat plate of steel and the twister took it in the air like a helicopter and dropped it God only knows where. Anyway, Murray did go through quite an ordeal. Back home, there was news on the radio about the destruction east of Edmonton.

The clouds were black as coal but for some reason the twister petered out. We did get a severe lightning and thunder storm with a fair amount of rain, that was Black Friday, July 31, 1987.