"When The Storms of Life Are Raging, Stand By Me"
By Stan Hitchcock

Tuesday Morning, 6:30 AM, February 5, 2008

Sitting out on the porch of our old farm house, looking down at the creek as it runs, bank full, again after the long summer drought in Tennessee, I enjoy my first cup of coffee and marvel at the spring like weather. It’s supposed to get up to 72 degrees here in Sumner County today, unbelievable for early February. There’s a cold front moving in tonight that they say will bring severe storms, with high winds, hail and possible tornadoes. Looks like I will be up late tonight watching the Radar on TV.

I grew up in the land of bad storms. Our farm was just North of Springfield, Missouri close to Pleasant Hope, Missouri. In the spring we would watch the bad storms roll in from Kansas and Oklahoma like freight trains coming across the Ozarks. My Mom, Ruby Ann, had grown up in Kansas and they had had a farm house plumb blowed away when she was a little girl so she was deathly afraid of storms. Whenever she saw the black clouds building up over the hills west of our house she would gather us kids, my brothers Sam and Dan and myself, and head for the basement. Dad, "Big Stan", would always be off working somewhere on the farm and he wasn’t afraid of storms anyway. Mom would make sure we huddled close to the Western wall of the basement so when the house blowed away, like in Wizard of Oz, we wouldn’t be "squashed like a betsy bug." I never did figure out what a "betsy bug" was but evidently she knew cause she used that phrase every time she thought the house was gonna fall on us during a storm.

History has a way of repeating itself I reckon ‘cause sure enough when Denise and I bought our farm in Sumner County, Tennessee we just happened to be right in line with the storms that start in Oklahoma and Kansas, move through Missouri and Arkansas and come across our Tennessee hills like another freight train. Well, we don’t have a basement in our old two story farm house, built in 1922, so we at least don’t have to act out that part of my childhood, nope; Denise just wants me to get in the pantry, under the stairway off the kitchen when it gets too bad. Mostly though, she has a hard time getting me to take shelter because I have a deep interest in watching storms. I’m fascinated by the power unleashed from the heavens and I just sit glued to the radar on TV. I am "big guy" unafraid and brave with all the masculine bluster and stupidity that goes with my gender.

However, I should take note of something that just happened a few miles up the road from us last week, when the last storm came through. My friends and music hero, Bobby Bare and his wife Jeannie live in a beautiful home on Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Bobby was gone and Jeannie was home alone last week when last weeks storm front came through. Jeannie was sitting on the couch watching TV about 10PM when a huge tree was blown over and came through the house, cutting it in two and landing on Jeannie in the living room. Jeannie managed to crawl out and call 911 and get help. She was treated and released from Hendersonville Hospital with two cracked vertebrae.

So, tonight, when the big storms come, maybe, just maybe, I’ll join Denise in the pantry, under the stairs just listening to the wind howl outside instead of sitting on the edge of the couch watching radar....where a tree could fall and squash me like a "betsy bug" and I never would get to find out what they really are!

Wednesday Morning, 6:00AM, February 6, 2008

What a difference 24 hours can make, after the storms have come and gone. Last night Tornadoes swept out of Arkansas and Mississippi, hit Memphis, hit Jackson, Tennessee and then headed on up to Middle Tennessee where we have our home. Sure enough, I was watching the radar on TV and it was coming right at us. We battened down the hatches and the wind howled, the lightning flashed, the hail rattled against the windows and after about 30 minutes it all seemed to pass on by. By twelve midnight reports were starting to come in that indicated there had been a bad hit about 4 miles from our house in the community of Castilian Springs, Tennessee. Because of the darkness and the blocked roads we weren’t able to get the details. I finally caught a few hours of sleep and woke up about 5:45AM this morning. I went out to my old truck to go over to Castalian Springs to check on our friends and neighbors. Denise and I have deep ties to Castilian Springs because we lived in a log cabin there when we first got married in 1985, our son Scott was born while we lived there and I started my television show, "Stan Hitchcock’s Heart to Heart" from an old log stage coach inn called "Wynnewood" located in Castilian Springs, Tennessee.

Dawn was just breaking over the Tennessee hills when I topped the ridge and looked down at what had once been such a beautiful little farm community. Now it had been reduced to piles of rubble and debris from what had been family homes. I pulled off the road and left my truck in a field to walk in to see what had happened to Wynnewood. I walked up the old road, picking my way past downed trees and power lines laying everywhere, and when I came around the corner next to Little Bledsoe Creek, the sight of Wynnewood laying in ruins was staggering. This wonderful old historic Inn was built in the 1820’s when this area was still just wilderness. Wynnewood was situated on the trace that the stage, from Louisville and other points North, used on the journey to Nashville and on down the Natchez Trace to Natchez and New Orleans. Wynnewood always seemed to be timeless and would last forever. I crawled over wreckage of trees, old logs, and artifacts from the early years of this country, and remembered all the wonderful times of music that I had shared with my friends and heroes on this very spot. Reno and I would sit out here on this old porch and tell stories and pick music on our two flat tops in the early years of CMT when we were just starting to build a network. In the early 1900’s, Dr. Humphrey Bate and the Possum Hunters would come here on the front porch of Wynnewood and play for their neighbors and friends. Dr. Bate was a country doctor and lived just up the road here in Castalian Springs. Right about here in the wreckage was a bedroom where Jesse James stayed one night, and out in the front yard under all the debris is where the Rebs and later The Yanks would bivouac and camp for periods of time as they traded off control of this area during the Civil War.

I finally found Lee Meyer, the caretaker of Wynnewood, wandering the back part of the property, alive but stunned by what he had endured. He had been inside his cabin, attached to the back part of the main structure, when the tornado hit blowing the roof and part of the walls off his refuge. We both stood and just looked, both of us locked in our own memories of this place we loved. Lee then told me the sad news, at least 5 people had been killed in Castalian Springs and they were still digging through the wreckage to see if there were any other lost or missing. Just across the field from where we were standing, a baby was picked up out of a house and blown over into another field. When the first rescue crew arrived they found the baby, hurt but alive, lying in the grass. The Mother and others were killed, but this precious little one was spared.

All across Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Tennessee had staggering losses in this huge storm event and all I could do was pray for the hurting families and for what is lost and could never be the same. You can rebuild, but you can not replace lost friends and loved ones and historic parts of our American culture.

"When the storms of life are raging, Stand By Me...when the storms of life are raging, Stand By Me...When the world is tossing me, like a ship upon the sea, thou who rulest wind and water, Stand By Me".
"Stand By Me"
written by: C.A. Tindley

We all have to go through the storms of life, sickness, death, troubles of all kinds, but there is One who will always be there to lead you through, no matter what happens. The Lord doesn’t say he will "keep us out of storms", He doesn’t promise us smooth sailing. No, He says He will always be there to give us strength to withstand whatever comes. Today, the good folks of Castalian Springs, Tennessee, and the other areas suffering from the storm, need His strength.

Stan