Life in the Cheese Drawer

write about some big weather you experienced.
one of my early summers was hot and dry, and the rain held off long throughout the summer months. i remember my elders talking about the crops and how no rain will affect the corn in the fields, their green stalks already taller than i. in the evenings, while i ran around outside through stubbly grass, the sun continued to beat down, low and orange in the sky as i stared out over the field on the north side of the farm. the winds blew across the field from the pig farm, from across our field and again the fields of my aunt and uncle. days and days like this.
then one afternoon the sky turned greenish yellow, and humidity hung in the air so thick i felt like i could stick out my tongue to get it wetter than it was in my mouth. my dad hung around outside on the porch, walking the driveway, hiking out to the edge of the field, even though it was not his corn. my mom turned on the tv and watched the local channel to see if there would be a tornado warning.
eventually the sirens rang, alerting us that a tornado had been spotted. by this time rain had started to dot the dust in our gravel driveway, making large, dark spots out of light tan. soon the spots melted together and the driveway was no longer dust.
my mom hustled me down to the cellar, which was in the back-back room underneath a piece of floorboards that swung up to reveal crumbling cement steps that led to a dark, damp hole in the ground with one small window on the east-facing side. i remember seeing my dad still watching the outside from the doorway in the room as i descended into the hole.  my mom went back up to get liz – a baby – and came back down, now with my dad, and the long, heavy cellar door came down on her head as she was making her way down the steps.
we waited in the cellar, which had a lantern and a weather radio in it as far as i can remember, until the threat of tornado passed.
by this time, my uncle squire had come out to the farm, and he, my dad, and i got in my dad’s orange and white pickup in the rain, drove the short distance to the edge of the cornfield, and watched the rain come down, windshield wipers steady against the rain. afterwards, one of the wallace men claimed to have seen the corn actually grow.

smooth, cool, drippy ice cream. in the dead of summer, those 95-degree days when the humidity is so high that your sweat can’t even ooze out of you pores because it has no where to go, the best place to be during the eveningtime, after supper has settled in your stomach and your tongue is craving something sweet, is dairy queen.
nowadays i get a hot fudge sundae, hfcs-laden as it is, but back when i was small, and trips to the DQ meant driving across austin to the west-side of town (the posh side), usually funded by my aunt colettie, i got a small vanilla ice cream cone dipped in chocolate shell. the DQ was small, and normally so packed that we would take our cones outside and sit on the hard, plasticated metal picnic tables that left diamond shaped red marks on the backs of my legs from sitting on them.
before the ice cream melted, you had to lick it up, starting with the tiny droplets of white ice cream creeping out the pores in the chocolate shells. starting at the top, you bit into the  shell, taking a chunk of the white ice cream with it, and suddenly your mouth was quelled; the coolness slipped down your throat and brought a shiver of delight in the middle of the hot. but you couldn’t dwell too long on the feeling. you had to beat the heat.
licking along the top of the cone often to lap up the ice cream, you slowly ate away all the shell, leaving a small mound of ice cream atop the beige cone, always one step ahead of the heat. sometimes you just licked at it. sometimes you bit a chunk of ice cream off the top, leaving teeth marks in their wake. eventually you were down to the cone, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there (unless, of course, you waited TOO long and the cone started disintegrating).
crunching your way into the cone, you eat your way to the bottom, where the criss cross of cone helped keep disintegration at bay. usually at this point the ice cream was gone – the shivers had subsided and even thought the heat was still heavy, you were a little less hot with the cool ice cream in your belly. at this point you had two choices – throw the nub of remaining cone in the trash or jam it in your mouth, drying out the last remnants of sweetness still hiding in crevices. usually i couldn’t throw it away – it felt like a disservice to the cone.
sticky fingers, sticky mouths, but sated, it was time to peel the backs of bare legs from red plastic and back into the reality of heat. it was a short respite, but it was a respite.