MAYFLOWER -- Louie Short was alive, but he wasn't happy.
The Burris Full-Field scope on his prized deer rifle was fogged up, and Short felt cheated.
"I gave $125 for that scope thirty-something years ago," Short said. "That was a lot of money for a scope back then. It would probably cost $600 now, and it's fogged up. I'm going to complain to Burris about that."
Never mind that the scope had spent two days in Lake Conway after an EF-4 tornado flung the safe that housed it 80 yards into the Lake Conway. Or that it took searching the bottom of the lake with high-tech side-scan sonar and a telescoping lure retrieval pole just to locate it.
It's a miracle that Short ever saw it again, one of many miracles that sprung from that awful April 27 night.
Short, 87, is the father of Kevin and David Short. Kevin is a professional bass angler who competes on the Bassmaster Elite Series Tour, and David, Kevin's younger brother, is a detective with the Conway Police Department.
Louie raised his family in the secluded, tight-knit little community at the end of Dam Dam Road, just before you get to the spillway at Lake Conway. Kevin's house was next door to Louie's house. Across the road lived Betty Bellinger, whose children grew up with Kevin and David. Robert Oliver another lifelong friend and neighbor, lived next door to Bellinger.
The storm took all of their homes. Bellinger survived the storm. Oliver, 82, did not.
That Louie survived may be the greatest miracle of all.
Louie's story goes back two weeks when he was prowling through a salvage yard looking for stuff he could use in his various projects. "Looking for treasures," is how he put it. Louie tripped and fell headfirst against the sharp edge of a steel I-beam. It ripped a gash the full length of his head down to the skull, and it took nine stitches to close the wound.
By April 27, the wound had finally healed to a point where Louie said he could stop wearing a cap to church. Kevin was in Shreveport at a Bassmaster Central Open tournament on the Red River. Kevin and his wife Kerry were at a restaurant and watching storm coverage on The Weather Channel.
"I'm going, 'Damn, that's headed for the house,' " Kevin said.
After supper, he and Kerry continued watching storm coverage in their travel trailer.
"I'm looking at that and saying, 'It's going through the bean fields (between Morgan and Mayflower),' " Kevin said. "I get on the phone to Dad and said, 'I don't know where you're at, but put on your helmet and get in your corner because it looks like it's going to get close.' "
Louie's "corner" was in the southwest end of the house, between a giant deep freeze and a massive gun safe that held about 20 guns, personal papers, titles to cars and boats, and the rest of Louie's life documents. It also held his entire life savings.
"He's a Depression Era guy," David said. "The bank is not his thing."
The steel safe is 30 inches wide and 70 inches tall, with about 3/16-inch thick steel. Louie said it weighed about 1,000 pounds. Kevin said it was more like 800. Whatever. It's heavy. It also was bolted in four places to the slab and held in place by heavy-duty washers.
The space between the safe and the freezer was about 3 feet wide. Louie hunkered down there with only a pillow over his head for protection.
The exterior wall on that side of the house was made of stone.
"The instant the tornado hit, the door to the attic dropped and I kind of dodged it because it fell right there at my feet," Louie said. "I looked up, and there was no roof. Gone. At that same instant, the ceiling went.
"Evidently, that's when the gun safe came loose and went over my head about 80 yards into the lake. When that occurred, the rock wall that went up to the ceiling came down and covered me up."
Somehow, Louie suffered only a sprained arm and some bruises. He dug himself out of the rubble to find his neighborhood gone.
"At that time, I heard Betty across the street hollering for me," Louie said. "She couldn't even get out the front of her house."
The tornado's destruction didn't end there as it made its way northeast through Vilonia and other communities, cutting a swath through the countryside. Sixteen people died, most of them in the Mayflower and Vilonia communities.
Bellinger sat beside Louie last Monday in what was left of his shop, holding his hand while he argued with Kerry Short over what kind of sandwich they would have for lunch.
"I had the TV turned up real loud," Bellinger said. "The last thing I heard was that the tornado had struck Plantation Acres off [Arkansas] 365. My kids had me on the cell phone and said the tornado is headed your way. I looked out and saw Louie's house was gone, and I started screaming his name.
"I'm just amazed there weren't more people killed than there were."
David Short, whose house was badly damaged in the tornado that hit Vilonia in 2011, was quick to the scene. A forest of downed trees and debris blocked the road to his father's house.
"There was a house over there that was on fire. It was fully involved," David said. "The gas wasn't just spewing, it was howling. So, you've got flame. You've got gas, and you've got all these treetops and debris.
"I've been coming down here since the early 1980s, but I didn't know where I was. I didn't have any point of reference because everything was gone."
David finally found Louie sitting on some rubble. It was time to evacuate.
"Initially, they made them go down to the spillway," David said. "They got a path and walked them out several hundred yards, climbing over treetops and stuff.
"He's 87-years old, man, and his house fell on him! He digs himself out of the rubble, checks on Miss Bellinger, and then they crawl out of this. Unbelievable."
David, who fought in the Iraq War in 2004-2005, helped Bellinger retrieve some items from her house. Oliver's body was in his driveway, so David alerted emergency workers. David said he'd known Oliver for 35 years.
"I've seen a lot of disasters, and this is the worst," David said. "This one rips right through. This is my neighborhood. We've been here for 30-something years. There's a lot of my childhood in that house that's gone."
"He's the luckiest SOB on earth," Kevin said of his father. "At 2:30 Monday morning, when I walked into that emergency room where they had him and I saw that he was OK, I said, 'We need to take you straight to the casino and haul your ass straight to a roulette wheel and pick a number, because it's going to be a winner.'"
One thing Louie won't buy with his winnings is a new Burris rifle scope. A scope like that shouldn't fog.
He'll stay on them until they replace it.
Sports on 05/11/2014