[Granville-Hough] 6-7 Feb 2009 Storm Pits

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

STORM PITS (as recalled by Harold Hopkins of Mize), Part 1

“Trust in God, but keep your powder dry!” Oliver Cromwell is supposed to 
have told his troops before one battle. Around Mize when I was growing 
up, people expected their Creator to look after them when they needed 
protection, but when a bad storm cloud came up most of them were smart 
enough to have an extra ace in the hole: a good, deep storm pit.
It was just plain good sense to make it as difficult as possible for the 
high winds to scoop you up along with your house, or parts of it, and 
take you somewhere you didn’t especially want to go. I don’t know that 
there was ever a killer tornado in our town itself, but you didn't have 
to travel far to see where one had touched down briefly and leveled 
trees, houses, and outbuildings in a swath of destruction visible for 
years afterward. One look made all your backyard excavating seem 
worthwhile. The raging of the elements can be both mysterious and 
beautiful but it takes a stout heart to forget safety and stop to admire 
it all, sepecially for those who have knowledge at first hand about what 
a storm can do to life and property.
One of the most vivid memories I have out of childhood was the dash to 
the storm pit through the wind and rain and thunder and lightning. Storm 
pits were dark, damp, smelly, cheerless places that you avoided as long 
as possible when you decided that the beast roaring about you was 
getting ready to flatten everything. Sometimes you put off the trip 
until it seemed downright foolish to wait another minute, and by then 
the wind might be pretty high and the sky pure electric.
On those dark days and nights I remember my parents bundling the younger 
ones, sometimes two at a time underarm, and dashing through the wind and 
wet to the storm pit, while I, the oldest, ran ahead or behind. It was 
scariest to be aroused from deep sleep amidst the noise and commotion of 
a windstorm by parents who themselves might have been awake for only a 
minute or two. When this happened the run for the storm pit was usually 
made without anybody dressing for the occasion.
Some ground was unsuitable for excavating holes for storm pits and not 
every family in Mize had one. Those whod did have one usually extended 
standing invitations to pit-less neighbors to drop in anytime. If there 
was anything more comforting than to have a good hole to go to during a 
storm, it was to have plenty of company with you. Neighbors might arrive 
before or after you, depending on their own judgements of the storm’s 
seriousness. Most houses were some distance apart at Mize and were not 
equipped with telephones, so there was no time for consulting, as there 
might be now, about when it was time to make the dash for the storm pit. 
Tornado type storms often occur so suddenly and at such odd times that 
even today radio and television are not very helpful in warning you 
whether you ought to take refuge in the ground.
A storm pit, or storm cellar as some call it, is an excavation in the 
ground that you hope is deep enough for the wind to leave you untouched, 
even if it should demolish your house. All the excavated part except 
room to enter at the front was normally covered by a horizontal layer of 
small, peeled logs or heavy timbers with their ends sunk into level 
ground at both sides of the excavation. Over this was a low structure 
two or three feet high at the front with a pitched tin roof sloping 
almost to ground at the rear. There was a set of crude wooden steps or a 
short ladder down into the pit and a hinged door. The floor was almost 
always bare earth. Permanent accomodations varied, but most storm pits 
had enough rough benches, chairs, or other materials that the occupants 
wouldn’t have to sit on the damp, cold earth. Since the horizontal 
timbers across the hole were in contact with the earth they were usually 
cresoted against termites and rot. Their intention was to keep you from 
being sucked out of the hole by the wind and to shelter you from falling 
debris should the low roof be caught and blown away. (to be continued)


Storm Pits (by Harold Hopkins of Mize), Part 2. Storm pits were not 
pleasant to think about and in fair weather were more or less ignored. 
Thus when storms came up they were not always ready for comfortable 
occupancy. A forgotten open door or poor water runoff around the 
structure could result in a wet floor or even standing water if the 
floor was impervious clay, and mosquitoes could breed in the puddles. 
Despite efforts to seal the structure properly, it was practically 
impossible to keep a storm pit perfectly free of spiders, wasps, and 
other insects, occasional toads that had fallen into the entrance hole, 
and other small creatures that made going down into the pit a test for 
the squeamish. Storm pits always had a depressing odor of dank earth 
mixed with creosote and fumes from the kerosene lantern that hung from 
the cross timbers.
Pits varied in size and accommodations. Ours was only eight or nine feet 
square and four or five feet deep. I don’t remember much about other 
storm pits, although I do remember visiting a boy named Ezra Rogers at 
Cohay Camp – as we called this logging community then- and when a storm 
came up we went into a very large storm pit that was much wider and 
deeper than I’d ever seen before and accommodated several families, 
perhaps 30 or so souls.
Social life in a storm pit was possible though the conversation was 
generally a bit forced. Wind and thunder could make it difficult to hear 
or make yourself heard, and lightning had a way of causing you to stop 
talking until you were satisfied that the bolt had struck elsewhere. You 
talked about the present storm or some past one, but always with an eye 
and ear on the progress of the one just outside. Most parents made 
efforts to keep children occupied to prevent fright, but children as 
well as grownups often fell silent to see if they could tell what was 
happening above the ground.
When the storm had blown itself out it was always gratifying to see that 
your house was standing just as it was before you left it. But if you 
were a child, you couldn’t help feeling a little resentful that your 
trip to the storm pit had not really been necessary after all, and you 
hoped you’d grow up to be a better predictor than your parents were. 
With most of your lifetime experiences ahead of you instead of behind, 
you seized upon any evidence you could gather that the storm had been a 
memorable blow. Seeing tree branches broken or roofing curled back in 
places as you climbed out of the hole meant that you had been in a real 
humdinger, one you could brag about to your friends afterward, like I’m 
doing now.