Survival & Self-Reliance: Visual Autobiography Part 5

What’s your earliest vivid childhood memory? 

Fear and Courage, the adrenaline rush of believing I was going to die, at age 3 and a half.

Growing up in Topeka, KS (aka Tornado Alley) summer time meant lightning bugs, hot humid days, and too many killer tornadoes.  June 8, 1966, I rode out an F5 tornado in the crawl space of our home with my Dad and baby brother. 

“Tornado Alley”, 5 x 5 inches, Mini Textile Painting ©2014 Ayn Hanna

Surviving a Near Miss

I coaxed my own courage as I watched my Dad use the butter knife to pry up the wooden floor panel in the front hall closet and cringed as he lifted me down into that dark hole, handed me my little stool to place in the dirt against the foundation and then handed me my baby brother wrapped in a blanket.

I sat quietly on my stool holding my brother, my Dad silhouetted in the light from the living room as he stood in the crawl space, his upper torso facing the other way, watching the TV through the open closet door.

When the TV and lights went out, in the black darkness and eerie quiet, my Dad came and sat next to me and wrapped his arms around us.  That’s when I heard the freight train in the distance and I knew it was bad.

It kept coming closer, getting louder.  I don’t remember if I cried or screamed out loud, but I sure did inside.  I felt that monster on the other side of the bricks I was leaning against. The house shook as debris was thrown against it and I feared that tornado was coming right through the wall.  But instead, the incredible noise began to soften, the train began moving away.  Was it really going away?  Yes, the sound grew faint and the dark quiet returned.

The next day, I rode my trike as my Mom and I went down the street to check on neighbors.  At the end of the street, all the houses were gone, people were digging through rubble, hugging and crying.  That tornado was one of the deadliest in KS history – it killed 16 people and cut a half mile wide, 22 mile long diagonal path through the city, narrowly missing our home.  This is partly why I no longer live in the mid west.

 Self-Reliance = Creativity

I loved school and books from a very early age.  My family had no money and I learned that if I wanted anything “extra”, like to order some paperback readers from the book catalogs, I needed to make some money.  This spurred my creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. 

While still in grade school, my brother and I made some good money swimming in the golf course pond, collecting golf balls, and selling them on the street corner on Saturday mornings.  I had an apartment cleaning job at age 13 and my first restaurant job at 15.  I wanted to go to college and knew I had to save money and figure out how to finance that.

“Self-Reliant”, 5 x 5 inches, mini textile painting, ©2014 Ayn Hanna

In high school, I got a job cooking at a Mexican restaurant and needed a car to get to work.  I found a used 1969 VW bug for sale in the paper.  When I went to test drive it, I saw it was painted with white house paint…a little weird, but I bought it anyway.  Writing out that check for $800 was the most I had ever paid for anything before.

That car turned into a money pit, but it also served its purpose in getting me back and forth from school to work and home again. 

Those lean times growing up were definitely character-building.  Necessity breeds creativity and a confidence in being able to figure out how to do what needs to be done.  Having to rely on ourselves helps us develop new skills and find our inner power.  Makes for some good stories and memories, too.