Kiss This
And I don't mean on my Rosie Red Lips!
1.) Only a true Southerner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a conniption fit, and that you don’t “HAVE” them, — you “PITCH” them.
2.) Only a true Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens,turnip greens, peas, beans, etc. make up “a mess.”
3.) Only a true Southerner can show or point out to you the general direction of “yonder.”
4.) Only a true Southerner knows exactly how long “directly” is – as in: “Going to town, be back directly.”
5.) All true Southerners, even babies, know that “Gimme some sugar” is not a request for the white, granular sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl on the middle of the table.
6.) All true Southerners know exactly when “by and by” is. They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.
7.) Only a true Southerner knows instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who’s got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. (If the neighbor’s trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin’!)
8.) Only true Southerners grow up knowing the difference between “right near” and “a right far piece.” They also know that “just down the road” can be 1 mile or 20.
9.) Only a true Southerner both knows and understands the difference between a redneck, a good ol’ boy, and po’ white trash.
10.) No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.
11.) A true Southerner knows that “fixin’” can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adverb.
12.) Only a true Southerner knows that the term “booger” can be a resident of the nose, a descriptive, as in “that ol’ booger,” a first name or something that jumps out at you in the dark and scares you senseless.
13.) Only true Southerners make friends while standing in lines. We don’t do queues”, we do “lines,” and when we’re “in line,” we talk to everybody!
14.) Put 100 true Southerners in a room and half of them will discover they’re related, even if only by marriage.
15.) True Southerners never refer to one person as “y’all.”
16.) True Southerners know grits come from corn and how to eat them.
17.) Every true Southerner knows tomatoes with eggs, bacon, grits, and coffee are perfectly wonderful; that redeye gravy is also a breakfast food; and that fried green tomatoes are not a breakfast food.
18.) When you hear someone say, “Well, I caught myself lookin’ .. ,” you know you are in the presence of a genuine Southerner!
19.) Only true Southerners say “sweet tea” and “sweet milk.” Sweet tea indicates the need for sugar and lots of it – we do not like our tea unsweetened. “Sweet milk” means you don’t want buttermilk.
20.) A true Southerner knows that if you are with a couple of friends, you could be with 2 or 10. The number doesn’t matter.
21.) And a true Southerner knows you don’t scream obscenities at little old ladies who drive 30 MPH on the freeway. You just say, “Bless her heart” and go your own way!
Can ya’ll relate to that?
A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller. He can see from her name plate that the teller’s name is Patricia Whack. So he says, “Ms. Whack, I’d like to get a loan to buy a boat and go on a long vacation. “Patti looks at the frog in disbelief and asks how much he wants toborrow. The frog says $30,000. The teller asks his name and the frog says that his name is Kermit Jagger, his dad is Mick Jagger, and that it’s OK, he knows the bank manager. Patti explains that $30,000 is a substantial amount of money and that he will need to secure some collateral against the loan. She asks if he has anything he can use as collateral. The frog says, “Sure. I have this,” and produces a tiny pink porcelain elephant, about half an inch tall. Bright pink and perfectly formed. Very confused, Patti explains that she’ll have to consult with the manager and disappears into a back office. She finds the manager and says:”There’s a frog called Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you and wants to borrow $30,000. And he wants to use this as collateral.” She holds up the tiny pink elephant. “I mean, what the heck is this? “The bank manager looks back at her and says: “It’s a knick knack, Patti Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man’s a Rolling Stone”.
I’m pretty much ready for fall already and summer just got here. It’s already been in the high 90′s since the end of May and this is not our high 90′s month.. that’s usually late July and all of August. Needless to say, I can’t wait to see what weather August has in store for us.. (insert major sarcastic tone here!)
So, in the past month..
My oldest son graduated high school and we’ve been making mad dashes trying to get all his college stuff finalized,
My youngest flunked not 1, but 2 classes just for the fact that he didn’t feel like doing his homework. This cost 400.00 for him to make up said classes which he did in 3 days of summer school.. done finished, without a grade under 80! See, he’s smart.. just lazy
My youngest son’s laptop broke.. again
The check engine light came on in my car,
Mr. Builder that we spent a month working on his 520,000.00 house filed bankruptcy and we didn’t get paid our 3000.00 for the job although we had to drive 100 miles a day to get there and eat every day.
Big wonderful 32″ TV quit working 
it’s in shop now,
Older son’s brand new 1500.00 laptop that he got for graduation tore up after 2 1/2 weeks of use but Best Buy did replace it.. for free!
The hubsters mother keeps telling them all that she don’t want to live anymore giving all the one’s that don’t live near her major guilt trips!
Mr. Granite, countertop and tile business man who wrote us a 1333.00 check because he lied to the IRS and said he was making it right and his freaking check bounces and now he’s hiding from me.
So, if you all want to just send me like 5 or 10 dollars to my paypal account it would be greatly appreciated LOL!
July will be better.. after all it’s not only my birthday but my anniversary too! 
<3
— Dear Alabama,
We see that the tornado outbreak here was as bad as Katrina was in Louisiana, except we didn’t feel so down trodden. We didn’t wait for help to come.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I was very thankful that the federal government and our President went to Tuscaloosa and signed over money to Alabama for disaster relief.
It IS appreciated for all those who are in need of the help. However, the most impressive news to me is that in the unsung corners of this disaster, all of Alabama just started getting up and digging out.
Providing for so many, there was an evident out pouring from the churches, neighbors, businesses, and more.
Sheriff’s deputies scanners called out to their own to get the elderly to safety, or to provide transport to those with internal injuries, cuts, and broken bones.
My husband personally moved people from their destroyed property in the days immediately following the tornadoes. Men who owned chainsaws were out in force helping neighbors.
People with trucks went and moved strangers, animals, and belongings to safety.
Volunteer firefighters made their valiant efforts a full time job.
People who never before volunteered went way beyond their own comfort zone and sacrificed sleep and even their own property to help others.
My dear friend and philanthropist who built a half way house for non-violent inmates with drug and alcohol histories, took them out in force to clear debris and to work and work and work on the roads and properties.
Many churches opened their kitchens and fed anyone who showed up. Then they opened their gyms and began storing and distributing supplies or allowing people to sleep on their floors.
Church camps opened their dorms to rescue and recovery groups. My local friends, Terrel and Lisa Milby, have organized and hosted groups from Kentucky and Tennessee. They are rebuilding the home of a Purple Heart recipient, Mr. Sonny Leslie, who is a disabled Vietnam veteran. He has no insurance and according to initial reports, FEMA cannot help him.
He was living in the “old home place” where he grew up and the tornado ripped through the entire area on Old Railroad Bed Road.
After the initial shock and disbelief settled, he felt overwhelming gratitude toward the total strangers who kept coming back to assist him in this huge task.
“After the storms left, I had no hope. Since you all showed up, I believe again,” he said.
Everybody helping each other. Story after story. The local newspapers are doing a great job too. Reporters are showing up after retirement to help. Those who still work in the trenches to report the daily news are putting in exhaustive hours, covering the stories of loss and hope, and organizing and
listing where to get help or where to give help.
My dear Alabama! You could write the book on disaster recovery after this.
And as for me, I know that storms in life are real and these storms were a real example of our vulnerability in this world.
What really matters in all of this is what we human people do with what happened here.
That truly holds God’s interest.
God is working through us, right here today, in beautifully resilient Alabama. I just know it.
Sincerely,
Diane Lehr
Awesome letter.. and how most of us feel.. we rose up to help others and didn’t stand around waiting on other’s to come and help us. We didn’t go around looting our neighbors, we went around helping our neighbors. We went out of our way to get precious belongings that were found back to their rightful owners such as photos, papers, certificates.. anything that we found that we knew didn’t belong to us. My heart goes out to each and every one of my fellow Alabamians, to the Tennessee people who found things as well and to ALL the people who came to our great state to help us.. we are a long way from ever getting things rebuilt, but we are a State that has come together as one and come out strong!
Chris Darden, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Huntsville describes the scene that day in the forecast office
Published: Sunday, May 08, 2011, 7:51 AM
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama _ On April 27, an unprecedented natural disaster unfolded before us as well over a dozen tornadoes raked the area. Not since 1925 has the loss of life been so great in a single day by tornadoes.
In a blink of an eye, well-constructed homes were turned to rubble, trees were stripped of their bark, and churches and businesses were taken to the ground.
The National Weather Service has a mandate to protect “life and property,” and we have worked diligently to do so for over a century.
Technology has increased greatly in recent decades with Doppler radar technology allowing forecasters to view the wind flow and rotation within storms, high-resolution satellite imagery that shows fronts and other features critical to tornado development, and computer models that better predict the evolution of weather in the upcoming days. In the days preceding what is now referred to as the Super Outbreak, meteorologists became increasingly concerned about this being the “big one”.
Conditions, including intense wind shear, an unstable air mass, a surge of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and a powerful storm system were coming together to produce an explosive environment for supercell thunderstorms.
Supercell thunderstorms are the genesis for long-lived, devastating tornadoes. A review of the forecasts, discussions and posts on social media in the days before the 27th reveal many forecasters comparing the setup to the outbreaks of Nov. 15, 1989, or “Anderson Hills ’95.”
Sadly, even those dire predictions were well below reality. In fact, this event will go down as the most tragic tornado outbreak in modern times and will likely be the benchmark upon which all future research is constructed.
Getting ready
Enough about the science. Now more on the human impacts.
To prepare for the event, the National Weather Service office in Huntsville started briefing emergency managers, first responders and local media more than 48 hours in advance that this would be a major outbreak.
Staffing was optimized with all available staff scheduled to work on the 27th.
In short, we knew it was coming. When I awoke at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, I looked at the radar on my phone to see storms approaching from the south and west and knew that it was potentially even worse than I could have imagined.
If tornadoes were on the ground at 4 a.m., what would the rest of the day hold? Upon arriving an hour later, initial damage reports were rolling in.
Injury reports from Marshall County would soon follow. No matter how long you’ve done this job, nothing prepares you for some of the calls you have to take or some of the things you see.
As the first wave rolled through and the next wave began to move in from Mississippi midmorning, it was obvious there would be no breaks for the area.
Hit twice
Some locations were hit multiple times Wednesday; the same houses damaged in the morning and wiped clean in the afternoon. I talked to one man who was called to his home in east Limestone County after the morning storms and was busy tarping his house when the sirens blew again.
A few minutes later he and his wife rode out the tornado in their shower, landing on top of a neighbors’ pile of rubble.
As we saw the “big ones,” the final and most intense group of supercells beginning to organize across Mississippi and western Alabama, I think we all had that sinking feeling.
By early to midafternoon, conditions were optimal for long-track killer tornadoes. Everything on the radar was showing signs of rotation. And then, there it was. First it was the Cullman storm. Confidence was high that a tornado was occurring, and there it was on the local skycam.
The Hackleburg storm topped that off. In my 17-year career, I have never seen anything closely resembling the beastly display on radar as it moved through Hackleburg and toward Phil Campbell with winds of at least 200 mph.
Forecasters often refer to a “hook echo” as a definitive sign of a tornado. This storm had a well defined debris signature where the radar was not picking up rain or hail, but was actually picking up large chunks of debris like roofs, plywood or trees.
That’s when you know that things are bad. Let’s be clear, we are all professionals and we all have a job to do. However, as this storm rolled through Mt. Hope and moved toward Tanner we were all visibly shaken.
Taking cover
Damage reports were slow to roll in and we knew why. Not because it wasn’t a damaging tornado, but because there was nobody left to report damage. In our gut, we knew that there were mass injuries and very likely a large number of fatalities.
We could only pray that our warnings, updates and diligent work could prevent this from being a complete catastrophe. Even after the storm rolled through Harvest where many of our staff resides, they continued to perform their duties professionally and without panic.
As the next storm moved through Madison, my wife and daughter were in the tub when I lost phone contact with them. Next thing, reports start rolling in about damage at the intersection of Gooch Lane and Wall-Triana not far from where I live. But I still had a job to do.
My staff and the people of the Tennessee Valley were also my concern, and we had to take immediate action to turn our own operations over to our sister office in Jackson, Miss., while we took shelter from the approaching storm. Thirty minutes later we were issuing warnings for Birmingham’s area while they were taking cover from a tornado.
By the end of the event, which spanned 17 anxious hours, the Huntsville office had issued 92 life-saving tornado warnings with an average lead time of 20 minutes.
Sobering scenes
In the days that followed, our staff worked many 16-hour-plus days surveying damage, providing incident support to first responders, and just being there for the community.
Our staff was fortunate as we had little damage as a whole, and no injuries or loss of life.
As I traveled our area from Tanner to Harvest to Huntland to Higdon to Oak Grove to Phil Campbell, I gained a greater sense of pride in our community with people helping strangers, stopping to hand out food, or providing a ride to a shelter.
I also became frustrated by the lack of national coverage concerning the plight of our communities. Many areas were devastated just as badly as Tuscaloosa, and a few may never recover.
The scenes of destruction are sobering even for a seasoned meteorologist. Seeing a house with anchor bolting completely obliterated in Oak Grove, or entire neighborhoods in northwest Madison County brought to the ground is horrendous.
The scene along Rosie Road in Tanner is gut wrenching, and just walking down Brown Street in Phil Campbell is too much to bear.
The storm was so powerful there that it pulled the pavement out of the ground. But that’s a mere sampling of the catastrophic damage that stretches for as far as the eye can see.
But the stories of survival are also uplifting.
I think of the many people who praised the warning system for saving their lives, and those who showed us their storm shelters and where they went to ride out the storm.
We found a family of four in Higdon who somehow were left untouched in their house when everything else was swept clean around them.
There wasn’t even any rubble left and their propane tank barely missed them as it shot directly over their heads.
Those are little pieces of joy and optimism in the large sea of despair.
Our community will recover and we will move forward. The National Weather Service will continue to work tirelessly to protect our citizenry when the next threat approaches.
On behalf of our staff, please accept our condolences for your losses and know that we are thinking of you during this difficult time.
Chris Darden is meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Huntsville.
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