The Sky Was Green That Night
	About three weeks after my friend, Paula and I had tried on our homemade Halloween vampire costumes just to see how wonderful we looked and to take pictures it was finally Halloween. I had gotten past my grueling ordeal with my car running out of gas while turning the corner of one of the busiest intersections in Tampa. I had to gotten out and push it to a gas station in my Dracula getup with my ten foot wide cape dragging on the ground behind me. I still don't know how the wolf calling, horn honking jerks in the car right behind me didn't manage to roll up onto my cape. There was either something wrong with their car or they kept gunning it real fast then stopping with a screech just short of it. Let's see. Let me guess. Maybe I haven't gotten past it after all. Anyway, it was Halloween. We were in costume and character and out on the town. We stopped by several friends houses for a short visit. They as well as strangers on the street loved us. I guess the tip is to do it on the proper night. Two of the people we wanted to surprise were my boss, Tommy Hayes, the Curator of Large Mammals at Busch Gardens and Paula's boss Dick Greco, the Mayor of Tampa. We had talked to them earlier so we knew they would be home. We said we were coming by but didn't mention the costumes. Oh, at that time Paula was working for Delta Airlines and had just recently left City Hall. About a year before she had seen paintings of mine at Dick's house so she called me one day at Busch Gardens. That was the beginning of one of the most wonderful lifelong friendships I've ever known. Our problem was that Tommy lived in Plant City, about twenty-five miles east of Tampa and Dick lived about forty miles away in the opposite direction on Davis Island. We started our trek in late afternoon and off we went to Plant City which by the way in its original Native American Indian language was Iccapuckasassa. ( Icka pucka sassa). It means "place where flowers bloom and many peace pipes are smoked". We reached Plant City about five o'clock and after visiting for around thirty minutes or so we were on our way back to Tampa and the mayor's house. As we headed west on Busch Boulevard approaching I-275 to go to Davis Island I noticed and mentioned to Paula "Does it seem like the sky is turning an eerie green color?" She replied "YES, it does!" It was just approaching dusk but it was different from that usual dimming time of day color. It was GREEN! As we entered the on ramp of the interstate the sky was swiftly churning and swirling and we knew something was going on. We headed south and soon just about even with the Sulphur Springs tower which looks like a mid evil castle, there were about a dozen cars pulled over on the side of the interstate. So in our true form we continued onward, thinking they were just looking at something. We had no time to waste. Then we saw one car turned over on its side on the shoulder. We stopped. Right there in front of us was a tornado crossing the interstate! It was so close that we were actually holding our heads way down low in the car in order to look up through the windshield at it. And us in those costumes! I could almost hear the music from the Wizard Of Oz when the witch was peddling the bicycle through the tornado. Too bad we didn't have a camera. The tornado, the vampire costumes, the castle and Halloween night, all at one time! After it crossed the interstate it continued eastward toward Nebraska Avenue across a large open area where it hit a billboard with a giant explosion of sparks into the air. It was electrifying! When we got to Dick's house our lips were a blur telling him and Dana about our adventurous journey in coming to see them. I asked Paula just the other day "Did that really happen to us? It almost seems like a dream." She said "Yes it did. Every minute of it." The only thing I don't understand is that I didn't hear that freight train sound. Everybody always says a tornado sounds like a freight train. But my hearing isn't the best. The other day on the news it said that a hungry seagull had devoured a house in Tarpon Springs. I knew that couldn't be right so I backed it up and found that it had said "A hungry sink hole had devoured a house in Tarpon Springs." Lash Out Loud