Storm front

Last year for Father's Day, my girls got me a tent as a gift. It's a pretty nice one, and large enough to divide into two sleeping areas. With school now out for the summer, they'd been bugging me to set it up in the back yard so they can "camp out." I promised them I'd do it on Sunday, so yesterday afternoon I battled the blazing sun and got it ready for them.

They had a blast, naturally, romping in and out all day, making plans to roast s'mores at night and sleep in the wild, regardless of the dangers posed by roving packs of s'mores devouring beagles.

That evening, around 8:30-9 p.m., I fired up the gas grill (burning myself not once, but twice) and ride herd on the girls and their friends as they compete to see who can turn simple marshmallows into blazing fireballs of death. In the midst of all this fun, I see off in the distance lightning illuminating the interiors of clouds. There hadn't been any clouds visible anywhere at sundown, and now there were some looming in the dark. Suspicious, I went online and checked weather.com. Sure enough, there was a monster line of thunderstorms stretching in an arc from north of Austin to south of San Antonio. From the looks of it, they'd hit us in an hour.

So I commence to take down the tent. I've seen what straight-line winds from thunderstorms do to tents like this--send them into the stratosphere, that's what. I just get the poles flattened down when I feel the temperature drop. We're talking 15-20 degrees. Then the wind hits. It wasn't a swirling breeze. No, it was a 30 mile-an-hour wave of wind, and it grabbed up the tent lifting it above me. I held on tight, pulling the thing over to the covered back patio and hollering inside for help. Much drama followed. You see, I made the mistake of thinking a metallic rocking horse would be heavy enough to hold the tent down while I chased down other assorted windblown items in our yard. The gas grill cover was quite lively. Several beach balls were working up the gumption to hop over the fence. An inflatable swimming pool apparently did not have enough water in it to stay planted on the ground. And an inflatable ball pit flipped up in the air--spilling its contents--and made for freedom. I just grabbed it before it cleared the fence when I heard a screeching noise behind me. The tent had lifted up, taking the horse with it. I grabbed.

For one disturbingly long moment, I felt like the combination of the ball pit and tent would be enough to lift me airborne. Fortunately, my girth triumphed, and I was able to hand off the ball pit as I gathered in the billowing tent. Everything got forced safely into the house, with little or no loss of clutter.

But man, that was high drama for the kids. Think of what fun they'd have had if they'd actually been camping out when the weather hit....

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