Yes, it's true. Waco had a tornader in the early hours of Saturday. Now I only speak slightly flippantly because A.) It's my nature and B.) No one was seriously injured. The Coca-Cola Bottling plant was pretty torn up, but I guess if anyone on earth other than McDonalds, (McDonalds, anyone? Sounds divine!), is going to have the resources to recoup that kind of loss, it would be Coca-Cola.

For the rest of Waco, without those kinds of resources at our backs, I have been quite proud of the way everyone has taken it in stride and begun to clean up. No one is going all Chicken Little, no one is crying for some pity, we're just cleaning up. Some folks got hit harder than others. The Bakery, casa mio, is by and large fine.

Most of what we have here is downed branches, leaves, and maybe some minor hail damage. I'm not totally done inspecting yet, but I don't expect to find much more. It certainly could have been a lot worse. You can see in the picture on the left all that is left over from the big trees around the house. That in and of itself is quite something considering what happened to trees just blocks away from us here. And I haven't noticed any hail damage to the cars which were sitting exposed in the driveway on the right through it all. Most of my neighbors' homes look much the same. This block seemed to be a good one on which to be!

The sound of the hail and thunder and wind and rain woke Beki up, but she stayed quite calm through the whole thing. Either she was really sleepy, or more likely, she's from Oklahoma and this seemed routine. (Editor's note: this will be the last time we here at Cachinnation Central ever admit she's from Oklahoma. When asked where she was born, I usually reply, "Oh... you know... a bit north of here.) My sister was hit fairly hard down in Killeen, but in true Baker fashion, when I called to check on her, she was fast asleep.

My Great Aunt, who is quite like a cross between Yoda and the Godfather of little old Baptist ladies in Waco, had a bit of a worse time with it. Here's her house on the right. You can see the torn up fence and the downed power line in her driveway. That's safe. She lives in the part of town that seemed to have gotten some of the worst of it. My folks live there too. They had a gazebo roof torn up, downed limbs, a broken fence, and loss of power for quite a while. There were downed branches and limbs everywhere. Some trees were split in half, some tore up fences, some were uprooted in their area. As I drove through this neighborhood, people were out taking care of it. It was really fairly moving to see all the neighbors helping each other cut up the fallen trees, haul it off, clean up the debris, and sweep up. Ladies were taking cool drinks around to everyone working. Kids were doing what they could. Here are a few photos of what I saw there, just a few short miles from the Bakery:



For those of you kind souls worried about how Bert and Ernie, The Cachinnator puppies, weathered the storm so to speak, please note their worried expressions below:



Yes, it takes quite a bit to rattle a Baker. Whenever a particularly large hail stone would hit the house, they'd look up at me as if to say, "What was that? Is that okay?" And I'd look at them and say, "It's okay, girls, it's okay." They accepted this, panted for a second, regained their usual glazed and vaguely dumb expressions, and put their heads back down. It's rather a supermodel existence for these dogs. (By the way, if you haven't voted on their middle names, do so now! On the right! Voting closes soon!)

So thank you all for your prayers and concerns. Waco still has some cleaning up to do. I still have some cleaning up to do. But most of us are a lot better off than the Coca-Cola plant. And given hurricane season last year, we'll always know that it could have been a whole lot worse.