This is the time of year when the words Warning and Watch in weather reports scroll across the bottom of our TV screens. I’ve heard people say they can never remember which is worse. To me Watch means it could happen and Warning means it’s going to happen.

Growing up in the flats of SW Minnesota we had different verbiage. A Watch would have been described as “Stand in your yard and watch the sky change color over the farmlands north of town.”  You could actually feel the wind change direction around your body.

But that change in the wind brought with it the Warning. If the dark lava from storm clouds was attached to these winds we headed to our basement.

Our basement was one of those musty, dark cement basements where daddy-long-legs held conventions. It was a multi-purpose portion of our house. In this case it served as a storm shelter. We’d gather under the open wooden stairway having always been told that it was the safest place in our house. Behind us on the cement wall hung the cabinet referred to as “the rations”. Inside were cans of vegetables (mostly green beans), jars of home preserved fruit, candles, matches, a transistor radio and of course a can opener. If our entire house collapsed on top of us and we couldn’t get out…we wouldn’t starve.

In later years that same cabinet served as rations when our basement became our bomb shelter and the same items were still inside. The cans were rusted and the preserves made the Donner party menu look good. Had Khrushchev’s “shoe” dropped this could have been the precursor to microwave food. We knew our bomb shelter wasn’t the safest place in the world, that honor went to the area under our desks back at school. As always this was still the safest place in the house. Fortunately the Commies never bombed my home town, but we were ready!

Now the Watches and Warnings are determined by more scientific means and we get them on every media available. I still go out to watch the clouds roll across the sky and wait to feel the wind change direction. But the minute I hear a siren I’m headed for our storm shelter. It is in our basement in a bathroom where I have promised my daughter that I’ll check for spiders whenever it looks like a storm is brewing. Our rations are granola bars and a jug of water. Our candles are battery operated and cell phones replace the radio.  One thing that I’ve recently added is shoes. Usually these storms happen during the Spring and Summer when people are barefoot. It’s tough to walk out of a building covered in broken glass when you’re barefooted.

And, just like that wooden staircase of my youth it is the safest place in this house. When the Watch goes to Warning that’s where we’ll be.