Sweet Sue, caught in the path

As y'all probably know well by now, I'm a tornado buff.  I've studied 'em ever since I was three and a half, and...hmmm, I'll be thirty-six and a half on June sixth, so that's thirty-three years to pull together a large collection of tornado-themed books.  Among the books that I own are a pair of companion pieces, Caught in the Path and Caught Ever After.  Caught in the Path discusses the 1957 Ruskin Heights tornado from the perspective of the adults strung out along the path (Treva Woodling's story will break your heart), while Caught Ever After discusses the same tornado from the children's point of view.  Among other things the now-grown children discuss how back then people thought that the less said about a disaster, the better.  Don't talk about it, just move on.  Yeah...can y'all imagine doing that to a child now?  Oh, your house, your clothes, your bed, your toys, maybe your school and/or your church are all gone, and maybe you lost family members, neighbors, friends, schoolmates, pets.  Maybe you were injured yourself.  But you lived, so it's time to move on.  Granted, not all baby boomer parents took that attitude, as my mother learned when Our Lady of the Angels School burned in 1958.  Life ran a picture of a little boy who'd died in the fire (link here, viewer discretion advised), and it scared Mama so much that Grandpa (himself a school principal) had to reassure her that their concrete school wouldn't go up like a torch the way the dominantly wooden OLA did.  The picture still scared Mama, but she was reassured and stopped fearing a school fire after Grandpa talked with her.  But yeah, I grew up with parents who'd explain the process of tornadoes and fires and death and what-have-you before saying "It's nothing you need to worry about right now."  They'd be honest, but they'd also try to be as positive as they could so that we kids wouldn't worry.

This does have a point, I promise.  The first chapter of Caught Ever After involves a little girl (later revealed to be author Carolyn Glenn Brewer) in her bedroom, sick with tonsillitis, UNDER A WINDOW SCREEN!!!  Not just under the covers, mind y'all, but under a friggin' window screen that has blown in onto her.  The tornado is in full swing, destroying her room, knocking over her bookshelf, sweeping away her little toys.  Carolyn, not knowing the word "tornado" or even that there is such a thing, presumes that she is being victimized by a monster or a giant.  At some point she mentions that her doll is in bed with her, and that she rolls over in an attempt to protect her.  And who is her beloved doll?  A name that I was delighted to recognize:  Sweet Sue.  This poppet.

Carolyn doesn't say how big her Sweet Sue is (nor is that relevant to the story), but she does mention that before the tornado is even gone Sweet Sue gains a chip on her forehead.  Carolyn also ends up with a gash on her forehead, just like her dolly.  Thus battered and frightened, child and doll weather the storm...only to find that the bedroom door is jammed and they can't escape.  Shudder...I feel for any little kid that has to go through such hell.  Carolyn Glenn and Sweet Sue eventually did get free and learned that Carolyn's parents and little brother also survived the tornado.  Carolyn was the only one injured physically, and her forehead didn't even scar.  But her house was badly damaged, her neighborhood in general was pretty much pulverized, and one of her neighbors died.  And there are goobers in this world that swear up and down that Missouri DOESN'T get tornadoes, especially in the winter.  I guess my sister's smart-a$$ classmates at University of Vermont think that Joplin and Caruthersville and Braggadocio are on some other planet (the Mayfield incident was in the news at that point).  Those morons thought they knew a lot about tornadoes, but they didn't have a clue, and they wouldn't listen when Sister tried to educate them.  So she took my grandfather's approach:  "Awww well, dammit to hell, stay stupid!"

I wanna take a closer look at my Sweet Sue and try to determine if such damage was repairable.  My doll looks like she's compo, and Mama thinks she looks like porcelain, but she's actually hard plastic.  I presume that the doll in Caught Ever After was too.  I think that by 1957 compo was kinda a thing of the past, but don't quote me. 

My doll does have a little discoloring on her nose, but no serious damage.  Carolyn lists the damage on her doll as a "chip" in her forehead, which could mean anything from a nasty scratch to a full-blown hole in her head.  As hard as this plastic is, if one could recover the broken piece one could stabilize a hole.  That said, any sort of "chip" or tornado damage would likely show on Sweet Sue for the rest of her days.  It wouldn't bother me too much; I'd just point to the mark and say "She survived too.  She was injured, but she survived."  

It's rare when my obsession with dolls crosses paths with my fixation on tornadoes, so I'll throw something else in.  In the second chapter of Caught Ever After Carolyn relates how in 1957, before the tornado moved through, life was pretty idyllic for the kids.  Davy Crockett hats were the thing for boys and tomboys, while the more girly girls trotted out Betsy Wetsy and Tiny Tears in little baby buggies.  There were other games that didn't require toys or hats, but Betsy and Tiny are the dolls that came up.  Oh yes, I know of those too.  I don't own either one, but Mama had friends who owned them.

Betsy Wetsy (left) was a product of the one and only Ideal, while Tiny Tears hailed from American Character.  Lamb Chop preferred Tiny Tears, LOL.  The pair didn't look much alike in the face, but they were very similar otherwise.  They were baby dolls who drank, wet, and cried, and if the commercial is to be believed Betsy Wetsy could develop a runny nose as well.  Miss Carolyn didn't state whether she owned either of the baby dolls, but she made it quite clear that she had Sweet Sue.  Sadly she never stated what became of Sweet Sue as she grew up, though doll and child were together through the duration of the tornado and its aftermath.

Oh, and the Ruskin Heights tornado?  If you don't fancy a ton of research, this is what it looked like.  I think it was outside Martin City, Missouri when this picture was taken.  It had already killed at least six people at this point.

Looks like Satan himself, doesn't it?  The picture HAS been retouched a bit as older tornado photographs often were (examples here, here, and here), but y'all get the idea of what Ruskin Heights and the other communities had to deal with that evening.  Retouched or no, this tornado bears an uncanny resemblance to the devil-storm that tore through Hesston, Kansas in 1990.  In case anyone has any doubts, the Ruskin Heights tornado was rated an F5 (as was the Hesston storm), the highest on the Fujita scale.  Forty-four people died, strung out along a seventy-one-mile path spanning parts of both Kansas and Missouri.  In the same outbreak seven more died in Fremont, which isn't super-duper far from where I live.  My family drove through Fremont when I was about ten (exactly forty years after the event), and you could still see something of a bare patch in the valley where that tornado had gone.  Oh, the trees had grown back, but they weren't as thick there as they were elsewhere.  The 2020 census listed Fremont's population as 43, by the way, significantly less than what it was in 1957.  Fremont was never a huge town by any means, but it's still home to a handful, and when tornadoes come around KFVS and KAIT give them fair warning just as they do for the larger towns.

As I insinuated above Missouri doesn't have quite the reputation for tornadoes that Oklahoma and Kansas do, but they DO happen in the state, often enuff that springtime can be scary, often enuff that my school had tornado drills along with fire and earthquake drills.  Indeed, as of writing six of the thirty deadliest U.S. tornadoes occurred at least partly in Missouri.  BUT...they're not so common that one has to spend their life with one eye on the window.  It's a case of "Don't be scared, be prepared," as Ryan Hall would say.  As long as you have a battle plan, then your odds of survival are pretty good.  As for the 2024 season, it kinda got off to a bang in April, and the death toll from tornadoes is up to twelve in the U.S.  As usual, the Great Plains have taken it the hardest.  Thank God, none of 'em have been around here, and I pray that it stays that way.

Love,
RagingMoon1987