Figured I'd add to the spirit of Iron Bowl week and share this recent post I read.
War Eagle, y'all.
It's hard to watch your team go 13-0 and miss the chance to
have a national title.
It's hard to finally get that championship and have the NCAA
and media breathing down your neck the whole time.
It's hard to watch your team go winless in the SEC and 3-9
overall, and then see your beloved trees ripped from the ground because one of
your detractors doesn't know the difference between rivalry and hatred.
It's hard to see your program's rich tradition and moments
of greatness denied by a never-ending chorus of haters who don't care what it
means to believe in Auburn and love it. But it's also hard to think of a greater memory than Tommy Tuberville leading
the perfect team out arm-in-arm onto the field. It's hard to find a better pre-game tradition than an eagle circling the
stadium to the soundtrack of 90,000 people united in our rallying cry. It's hard to find a fan base that could take the death of another tradition in
the wake of a terrible season and turn it into a picturesque celebration of
everything Auburn. It's hard to catch a ball you can't even see, to juggle the weight of an
improbable comeback and an improbable year, and then carry it into the end zone
like you meant to do it the whole time. It's hard to find a better coach than Gus. The truth is, I'm not too worried about this Saturday. We are the underdogs,
and it'll be hard work to pull off the upset. But hard work is exactly the kind
of work we believe in. And no matter how easy it might be right now to just roll with the Tide, I will look back when it's all
settled and know that the hardest moments and how we dealt with them are just
part of why it was, is, and always will be
Throughout my entire teenage and college life, I found myself in quasi-serious relationships. I'm a romantic at heart and the white-picket-fence-babies-minivan mantra was (and is!) what most southern women want whether they would ever admit it or not.
It's what I wanted at one point, too. Can't deny it. It's embedded into our southern-born DNA.
The Mrs Degree
You go to school. You meet the love of your life. You get married. You move back to your hometown (or somewhere relatively close). You have kids. Those kids grow up. Go to school. Meet the loves of their lives. Get married. Have your grandkids.
And the cycle continues. That's how it's supposed to work.
It's what makes small towns so close knit and keeps a community strong.
Well me, I was the misfit.
I followed my heart to Florida in 2005, and by 2007 was stuck in a place I never thought I'd be -- I wasn't with the love of my life, I wasn't married, I wasn't back home, and I didn't have kids. I remember looking around my very first one bedroom apartment 600 miles away from home thinking well what now?
I was alone with no friends, and had a job that was promising for the future but didn't make ends meet. I had never been single for a long period of time, and had never supported myselfwithout financial help from school loans or someone to share the bills with.
What to do?
Like the Taurus I am, I stubbornly decided to prove that I could do it on my own. No time to feel sorry for myself -- so I hit the ground running.
In the Sunday paper one morning there was a listing for servers/bartenders needed at a local restaurant. I had waited tables in college and knew how nice awesome it was to walk out with wads of cash in my hand (heck, I'm still jealous even today, who am I kidding)- working two jobs was going to be tough, but it was a good temporary solution and I figured maybe I'd meet some friends there too.
Done and done.
Little did I know how many people I would meet and how much self-evaluation I would encounter.
I realized I didn't even know what I wanted for myself. For so long I had been morphing my wants and opinions into whatever everyone else wanted or liked. What does Mary want? What does Mary like? I had no idea. It's very similar to that scene in Runaway Bride, where she doesn't even know how she likes her eggs cooked.
The group of people I worked with were so open minded that it allowed me to form my own opinion on things without being judged or criticized.There were the goody two-shoes, the alcoholics, the born-again Christians, and the ones that have a record in the Pinellas County System. You had the mothers and fathers trying to make ends meet for their kids, and you had the college students just trying to make a few extra bucks to pay their cell phone bills. It was one big dysfunctional family, and they carried me through my self awakening while I got my groove back.
At this point in my career, I had gotten promoted with my hotel company and didn't "need" my serving job anymore, but it's where all my friends were and I had fun there. So I kept it going on the weekends.
It was chaotic - it was dramatic - it was long nights and early mornings - but it was family, and that's how families work sometimes.
Thank you to my St Pete family for getting me through what could have been a dark time. Just like the great Whitney Houston, I will always love you.
Growing up, I thought Cullman was super lame. Nothing to do, no shopping mall, no activities for kids my age – all we had was our 3-movie theater and a bowling alley. Some hung out at the old train depot, some in the high school parking lot, and some chose to “cruise” up and down US 31 on weekends. You would see at least 10 people you knew in the Dairy Queen after church on Sunday nights, or at Denny’s on a Friday after the football game. There wasn’t really anything open past 9:00 (until the Wal Mart super center was built at least). Even though we were bored, we lived in a town with no heavy crime and no heavy drugs or alcohol abuse. We could feel safe leaving our front doors unlocked, and having your kids ride up and down the street on their bikes to a neighbors house without fear of them getting kidnapped. It was a great place to raise a family, and I’m so glad looking back that it’s where my parents decided to raise the Malone brood.
Cullman, being the small town that it was, never got much attention, especially national attention. In the past few years, you may have noticed Cullman in the movie Bruno (where he goes “camping” with some good ole boys), or on youtube for a famous “commercial” spoof that has 2.5 million hits (watch it here, it’s actually pretty funny). It was never on CNN’s breaking news, never trending on Twitter, and videos of Cullman were never shown on news channels around the globe.
On April 27, 2011, that all changed.
Around 3pm, I logged on to twitter (you can follow my random boring tweets at @marymm if you so desire.) An old friend of mine tweeted “Tornado emergency for Cullman. Officially freaking out.” I logged onto James Spann’s TV station on Ustream and watched the Cullman skycam live, which showed a monster tornado ripping through downtown. I watched this thing literally destroy my city, sitting helplessly in my office chair 650 miles away.
*Side note*…. in the words of one of my best friends Kate: “James Spann, I miss you. Part of me is glad you haven't moved to a national outlet when you so obviously deserve it. But I am glad you are still in north Alabama. We love you.” No truer words ever spoken my friend!
I took a video of my computer screen as it was happening...if you turn the volume way up, you can hear James Spann as he describes the tornado hitting the courthouse and First Baptist Church.
What is being reported as of late is 3 tornadoes tore through downtown Cullman. Literally from one end to the other.
The Cullman regional hospital got hit. The Courthouse basement doors where people took shelter were split from the hinges as the roof was being torn off. The First Baptist Church’s steeple was pulled apart and the back of the building ripped open. My home church, First United Methodist, looks like a haunted house with the windows blown out and the roof gone. A popular local café, the Busy Bee, had its roof cave in, reportedly trapping people inside. Everything within blocks of these structures had all their windows blown out too, and some of the old, historic buildings downtown just crumbled to the ground like a pile of bricks.
Before you know it, CNN is reporting Cullman’s tornadic activity on their breaking news feed. Cullman was the 5th highest trending topic on Twitter. As I watched the local Tampa Bay news last night, videos of MY hometown were being shown. Terrifying videos and photos start to surface on social media outlets of the monster tornado and all it’s damage.
Here is a video of the damage from a local news station:
Here's another video of Cullman destruction from James Spann:
To give you another angle, here are some before/after pictures:
I am pretty sure this was Vincent's furniture...the entire brick top of the building is gone compared to the photo below.
Vincent's Furniture, before the Tornado
First United Methodist Church
Church after Tornado - windows blown out, roof blown off
A closer view of the church
This store was called "Little Bit of Everthing" - AKA "Little Bit" store. It was in an old Ford Dealer building - they covered the Ford logos with bricks on the upper facade after he store opened.
Little Bit store now - all the bricks were knocked off the top, showing the old Ford signs
Little Bit store again, crumbled to the ground.
Many of my friends and acquaintances have been directly affected, and are stranded without power and gas, and some no longer have homes at all.
And this is only the beginning. A tornado just as big ripped through downtown Tuscaloosa a little over an hour after it hit Cullman, staying on the ground for over 100 miles all the way to metro Birmingham, where it grew to 1 ½ miles wide. It left a trail of destruction that could be compared to the Tokyo earthquake.
Cullman is a very unique and special town to anyone that lives there or has ever lived there, and I believe that anyone from the area would call it “their” city, or “their” Cullman. These aren’t just buildings and structures to these folks – this is their history, their century-old family businesses, their way of life, their childhood, their homes, their everything. That is MY history and MY childhood, being shown on CNN in ruins. I’ve never felt so unnerved, helpless and just plain heartbroken.
Power and damaged transmission lines could take 7-9 days to repair and restore power to the city. Cell towers and radio towers have been destroyed. The president has called for a state of emergency, and federal help is on the way, however so much needs to be done locally. I’ve seen a few notes already about volunteers being called to help in the area, and seen pages on facebook for donations through Toomers for Tuscaloosa and also sites such as American Red Cross – click on the icon below for more info.
Keep your eyes peeled as the days go on for updates and other ways to help and volunteer, but I’d be just fine with only a few prayers for my Cullman, and for my State.
If you have any stories, updates on the city of Cullman or the state of Alabama, links to pictures, videos, or any updates on ways to volunteer, please comment below and share!!
Here are a few other links I've found that have pictures of other very hard hit areas, including Birmingham and Tuscaloosa:
