Free Footloose in America: Dixie to New England by Bud Kenny Page A

said, “She drove me nuts. Kept trying to get out of my car and walk home.”
    “I’d got here faster.”
    “If you didn’t get electrocuted.” Bonnie shook her head. “When she tried to do it, the police told her to get back in the car and stay there. They had live wires down on the road and it was raining.”
    Connie said, “When we finally got here the whole town was dark. Just car lights and flashlights, and debris everywhere. It took forever to find my husband and kids. I never did find my house.” She clapped her hands together above her head. “But praise the Lord, nobody in our family got hurt.”
    A few days after the tornado, TYCO announced it was going to shut down the plant and move to Mexico. “And if we wanted our severance check, we had to teach the Mexicans how to do the job.” Connie sighed. “What a week that was.”
    When Patricia and I met the twins, they were both taking computer courses. Bonnie said, “Maybe it will help us find a job that won’t get sent to some other country.”

    Another thing that was different about Kentucky was its highways. Most had no shoulder, and the pavement was usually less than three feet from a deep ditch. The edge of the asphalt was notched so that drivers who fell asleep would be awakened by the thumping of their tires. It was a bad situation for us. We couldn’t walk on the edge of the pavement because the notches tripped human and mule feet. And when the cart wheels rolled over them it sounded like a stick being dragged across a picket fence. It jostled the cart so much I was afraid it would vibrate to pieces. With no room between the pavement and the ditch, we had to walk in the lane of traffic.
    Such was the situation on the west side of Paducah when ominous clouds began to roll in. It was a Thursday, in the middle of the afternoon. That morning on the radio, they said we could have severe thunderstorms later in the day. And as fast as those thunder heads were moving, it looked like their forecast was correct. Near the intersection for the road to the Paducah airport was a wide gravel spot where we pulled off the highway. I mounted our orange rotating beacon on the back of the cart, while Patricia pulled our rain gear out. She was handing me my yellow raincoat, when simultaneous lightning and thunder exploded overhead. A heartbeat later, the sky let loose with a deluge. It was so fast and furious, that both of us were drenched before we got our slickers on. I was shoving my arms into the sleeves when I said to Patricia, “Get in the cab!”
    “Why?”
    The rain was so intense, I had to yell. “No sense in both of us being out in this!”
    It was such a fierce rain that it hurt our faces. But Della ignored it. The traffic, thunder and lightning, none of it phased her. She just tucked her ears back and plodded through the storm. I squished along beside her in my flooded boots, saturated socks and frayed nerves. The rain intensified, and so did the traffic. Rush hour was on, and we were in the way.
    When we came to a place where we could pull off the road, we did. Usually it was someone’s driveway where we would stand and let the traffic behind us get by. But those places were few and far between. Each time we pulled over, it would be several minutes before we could get back out on the road.
    While we stood in one of those driveways, a car stopped and the driver motioned for me to get out into the lane. Through the storm, I motioned for him to continue on. But he kept waving for me to pull out. Finally, as I saw him roll down his window, I yelled, “Go on sir. It’s OK.”
    He stuck his head out into the storm and yelled back. “No it’s not! I live here!”
    A couple of driveways later, we had just gotten back into the lane, when I heard a big truck pull up behind us. As the motor babbled down into low gear, I looked to my right at the ditch. It was overflowing and sending rapids across the pavement. I couldn’t see the edge of the road–or the