Twister!

Nashville is the city of music. It is the city of printers. Today, it was the city of tornados. A few minutes after Drew and I headed out to the print shop to look at the proof of the 2006 Pork Report to be released April 12, he said, "I'm not gonna lie to you. That looks like trouble brewin'."

My Oregon eyes surveyed the storm clouds and saw merely rain. What looked like a normal downpour in Oregon, however, turned out to be a bit more destructive in Nashville. There's a lesson to be learned here...

Nicole in front of downed tree.

The tornado made the town difficult to navigate because you could not always pass through the destruction and, in one case, a street sign was twisted around so that the street names were 90 degrees "wrong."

Since we could not drive, Drew and I walked toward the printer. As the second wave started to pass, we were both fascinated by the level of destruction and hopelessly lost.

Yikes! Don't touch that!

We stumbled over debris and saw a fellow with a destroyed car. We looked at furniture sticking out of a broken retail window. The boat manufacturer was already out there clearing debris...

The Boat Factory.

The nice folks at the printing place were outside the building when we finally scrambled over the train tracks to find them and they had sustained minimal damage when compared with the neighboring businesses. Yet, a critical part of every print shop is power and all the poles and lines leading to the place are down. In addition, there are rumors that the press was "making funny noises." All the windows in the place are GONE and there are tree parts INSIDE. We were happy to see that all were unhurt.