NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Sat, 14 Apr 2007
When I Make An Announcement...
Or "Friday The 13th." Or "Couldn't Stand The Weather." So many good
titles to choose from.
Anyway, we knew all day on Friday at Threadgill's that we were racing the
rain; we just didn't know when it would come through. We were doing an
XM radio taping of Uncle Lucius, The Band Of Heathens, and Mickey &
the Motorcars. The first two went without incident, and both bands played
their hearts out, really fine work.
Towards the end of the Heathens set, our radar-watcher came out
and said that the cold front was pretty much here. I made an announcement
that we had a little bit of weather on the way, and that we were going
to tarp things up for an extended intermission. (We'd planned on
continuing the show after the little rainstorm blew through.)
One minute later, a wind came by and the temperature dropped by
twenty degrees. I looked up from my tarp-work. Over the back fence,
which usually has a fine view of the auditorium and Hooters, I saw
what looked to be a wall of gravel flying horizontally down Barton
Springs Road toward the Congress Avenue bridge. Maybe fifty feet away.
Then all hell broke loose. Tree branches flying. Chairs flying. A
transformer exploded in a shower of sparks. A sound of metal being
ripped, kind of like I used to hear out of the old Tips Iron building
when I lived by it. People panicking. A mouth full of leaves and
gravel; mic stands falling over, etc, etc.
Yes, dear friends, yours truly and everyone outside at Threadgill's
last night was about 150 yards away from what I can only assume was a
full-on tornado. It took a chunk of the roof off of Hooters and left
huge tree branches laying all around the area. And damaged
Threadgill's not one bit. The power on the North side of Barton
Springs was out; ours was fine.
Amazingly, no one was hurt. I have a little place on my arm where a
chunk of rock took some skin off of me, and I got banged into a fence
post hard enough that my old 48-year-old rib cage is a bit sore today,
but otherwise all I have is a interesting story to tell the grandkids.
It was cool.
Posted at 12:36 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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