I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain.

I know this is the wrong place to post this, but it's Saturday and nobody will read it.

Fifty years ago I lived in Kansas City's version of Levitt Town, a subdivision called Ruskin Heights. I was 9 years old. I spent the late afternoon of May 20, 1957, playing with my best friend RW. We played and played together. We were in the same class at school. We rode our bikes. We built snow forts. Wherever one of us was, you would find the other. We were inseparable.

It was a hot, muggy day. RW had gone home for dinner and had come back to play. He hadn't been there long. I recall my mother calling us to the house. She told us that bad weather was coming. I had to come in. She said RW needed to go home. His mother was waiting for him. We looked at each other through the screen door. He said we would see each other in the morning. I remember looking at RW as he ran up the street to his house. As I recall his mother met him at the door. My mother took my brothers and me down into the basement. We were joined by our nextdoor neighbors. Then we found out what an F5 tornado is all about.

My best friend died.

I just got back from a 50th year memorial service. Mostly a lot of old people remembering. Many imagining how life would have been different if we had not been hit by the tornado.

When you are 9 years old death is a horrible thing to encounter for the first time. I will never forget the last time I saw RW.

In 1970 James Taylor wrote a song called Fire and Rain. A lot of people think it is a story of tragic love. Others are convinced it is an anti-war anthem. Me, I have always thought James Taylor wrote the song for me, he just used the name Susanne instead of RW and the phrase “flying machine” instead of tornado. I guess he figured it would sell more albums that way.



The 1970 version is better, but, like Taylor, I am an old man, remembering and imagining.

Oh, when you listen to this think of all those people who will be remembering our 3400 children whose lives have been cut short in the tornado that is Iraq.