Where did you bring me?

When we were still newlyweds, I got orders to go to Ft. Sill, OK, for the officer's advanced course (OAC).  This is circa 1999.  I had also asked for Ft. Sill as my follow-on assignment.  At that time, the worst thing you could get out of OAC, especially after a "plum" assignment like Ft. Stewart, was a year unaccompanied in Korea.  That's why I asked for Sill.  I figured it was my best chance to stay in the states with Jeni and we'd just come from a rapid deployment post and Ft. Sill was anything but rapid deployment.

Before we went, I prepped her up good.  I told her what a dried-up, hot, cold, windy, God forbidden piece of ground that Ft. Sill and Lawton was.  When we got there, she saw that there was some trickles of water, and some green stuff growing along the creek banks.  Given my low reviews, she thought is was might near close to heaven in comparison.  Then a couple of week after we got there, the infamous May 3rd tornado outbreak happened.
http://www.koco.com/may3/index.html

We were renting on the west side of Lawton at the time.  A few weeks later, we had some wind event that could have been a small tornado, or a straight line downdraft, we will never know, but the cable went out and just before it went out the TV weatherman said, "if your cable goes out, go to some local FM radio and we'll be there for you".  Well, the cable went out and we started tornado preparations way too late.  We dug up some C batteries to get the radio going, found a flashlight, and prepared to occupy the tiny hallway bathroom.  Jeni ran around to get the wedding album, some other invaluable things, and the dogs.  I got a gun.  (you have to be prepared for the aftermath, right)  So we've got Jeni and I, Belle (the Lab mix) and Bob (the Beagle), our wedding album, my .45, and goodness only knows what other priceless family artifacts stacked in there and we turned the radio on to get the latest and heard nothing but country music... and by now it was over.

Now Jeni wants to know "where did you bring me?"  I had to buy her a NOAA radio that would alarm anytime there was a warning and she would never go to bed if there was a tornado warning active.  She did not want to get caught in her night clothes if a tornado hit.

{as an aside, straight line downdrafts happen when wall clouds start to break up.  I was in OKC the night before I reported to OBC in 1995 and woke up to a heck of a wind.  I turned the TV on and saw the weatherman talking about straight line winds and saying there was no need to worry, because it shouldn't be more than 65 mph.  I thought "that's nice, but in Alabama, we worry about 65 mph!"  As another aside, they imploded the remnants of the Murrah building, that Timothy McVeigh bombed, in OKC the next day}

It all turned out OK.  Ft. Sill was a great post for us.  We actually made some great friends and I still have some great mentors from that time.  We bought and sold this house on the east side of town:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=34.63364,-98.34933&spn=0.002781,0.00618&z=18&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=34.633533,-98.349319&panoid=a7CCvu5G_OsCI2uFKF6-6A&cbp=12,265.15,,0,1.17

That house is the reason we will never buy again until I retire.  Jeni couldn't take the stress of the selling process.  If you're in the DC area, ask me what we bought and sold it for, it will make you sick.