It Takes A Baby To Cry, It Takes A Train To Describe A Tornado

The other evening I was wrapping up another hard day's work by dining out; I had just pulled up to the drive-thru window and forked over some hard-earned cash and waited for my plastic-encased cuisine when the girl at the window looked above and beyond my car and said, "Does that cloud look right?" Hmm, a budding TV weatherperson, I thought to myself, as my glands started hyperventilating with thoughts of savory fried food. Next thing I knew she had called the fry fryer over to look at the western skies. Allowing myself to be distracted from my imminent culinary reveries, I turned my head and saw nothing but a huge black cloud "booking" (as we used to say) right at us. The cloud--more like the entire approaching sky--had a kind of curlicue at the front which, I assumed, the girl at the window took to be a funnel cloud, as in, get thee to a cellar, Dorothy, twister's a-comin'. Just my luck, I thought. To be swept away after I paid my money but before I got my victuals. Instinctively, I listened for the sound of the ol' Double E coming down the tracks. All I heard, though, fortunately, was somebody's muffled voice repeating his order for a Number 4, large, with extra cheese. Saved again.

Because, being upper middle aged, I know that unless you hear that train, there is no tornado. That's all tornado survivors ever say, isn't it? "It sounded just like a freight train." Unfortunately, we've all heard that description far too many times over the last few weeks. Thankfully, I've never experienced a tornado, and I'm not here to make light of them. I'm just curious about that "sounded like a train" description. Everybody says it, so it must be eerily true, but I wonder: What did people say before there were trains? How did they describe a tornado prior to the mid-1800s? "Hark, said tornado sounded akin to a, well, forsooth, like naught I have ever heard heretofore." I mean, try to describe the sound of a rumbling train. It sounds loud, like, well, just like a tornado, if you've been unfortunate to hear one, otherwise, it sounds like nothing else. Did people freak out the first time they heard a train, thinking, with no other frame of reference, that a tornado was coming? Did some wise guy immediately say, "Sounds just like a twister, don't it Jed?" thus linking tornadoes and trains forever? Makes you wonder.

And wonder about other expressions. Now I've gone on at length about at what might have preceded sliced bread as "the greatest thing since" here, but this whole train/tornado thing has me thinking about other "modern" expressions as well. Before rockets and thus rocket science, what was it "ain't" when somebody couldn't perform a simple task? "Churn that butter, boy! It ain't building a stage coach!" Before there were headlights, clueless, startled people looked like deer caught how? "Whatsa matter, Jethro, you look like a buck staring at a lantern." My God, it's only been in my lifetime that people have been able to complain that if they can put a man on the moon, why can't they make a milk carton you can actually open. What was the gold standard of human achievement before Neil and Buzz romped lunarly? "If they can amputate Abner Yoder's leg with nothing more than a pint of whiskey and Armstead Claythorne's hacksaw, you'd think they could make a commode that could somehow flush crap far away from here." What was the Cadillac of expressions before there were Cadillacs? "Did you see how Pretentius was dressed last night? He's got the Caesarian Chariot of togas." Forget about issues of modernity, what about cultural differences? Surely cannibals don't say they're so hungry they could eat a horse. I'm so hungry I could eat the Lard triplets and still have room for Baby Huey?

Pondering all of this, it makes me conclude that one of the oldest expressions, one that has stood the test of time and newer ways to convey an apt description, must be "cry like a baby." Ever since Cain and Abel (do we know which was older? I'm no rocket scientist/Einstein [who was the Cadillac of smart people before Einstein? My guess is Erasmus. It's been a long time since I had to remember what Erasmus was known for, but I do remember he was smart. And isn't Erasmus a name overdue for a resurgence in popularity? Don't we have enough little Joshuas and Taylors running around? I want to meet a six-year-old Erasmus one of these days] when it comes to Biblical scholarship) I'm sure anyone who cries a lot has been described as crying like a baby. Maybe, following the lead of trains (and think about it: trains certainly aren't surging in popularity; once they're obsolete, how are people going to describe tornadoes?) it will take some new form of transportation to cry better than a baby: "Oh be quiet. You're crying just like a flying car!"

I don't know. I just count my lucky twinkling orbs in the sky I live in such modern times where figurative expressions are so easily at hand. Let alone the hardships of making one's own butter, dealing with outhouses, and taking all day to travel a couple miles, coming up with appropriate descriptions for everyday occurrences must have been like dealing with a dial-up internet connection. I live so far away from train tracks I can't really say if I'm on the right or wrong side of them, so as long as I don't hear trains--literal or figurative--I'm happy exactly where and when I live.

HEY: There's still time to do a good deed, have some fun, and maybe win some money by being a rock swami. Check out the details here.