Trek Across Moore - Part 2

(May 20, 2013)           (Rev F: 5/4/2020)

[Note: Thanks for returning to my story. I have to admit that at this point, the story probably bogs down a little. But since you've come this far, let me encourage you to stick with it, if for no other reason, because it leads up to the best part, Part 3, which is the final part. The third part includes the 30 or so terrifying seconds that my relatives spent directly under the lash of one of our planet's most horrific storms.]

[Another Note: In the rest of my story, I'll be talking about the area of Moore from my sister's house - Ridgeway Street/Plaza Towers east to the Moore Medical center. I'd like to acknowledge here that the larger part of Moore to the west of the Ridgeway/Plaza Towers neighborhood was also devastated. It's the part that I rode the bicycle through in Part 1. I'd hate to shortchange the folks who live in the western part of Moore; it's just that it's not as much a part of the remainder of this story.]

After finding out about my sister, Deanna, my next thought was to check the welfare of her son (my nephew), Mark Stephens, who, as you will recall, was injured alongside his mother. Also, I needed to check on my niece, Shelley Irvin (Deanna's daughter, Mark's sister), and her family. The Irvin home was only about six blocks away. I felt like if I could go there first and find them, then we could pool our resources to find Mark. [At this time, I didn't know that when the tornado hit, a third person, whose identity I'll temporarily leave unknown, had been there with Deanna and Mark as the tornado first struck the Ridgeline/Plaza Towers neighborhood.]

The Irvins' home lay on a straight line roughly halfway between my sister's house/Plaza Tower Elementary and the Moore Medical Center.

I think that at this point, in order to be clear about several aspects of the story, especially the beginning of tomorrow's Part 3, I need to describe the geography of this section of Moore. I'm not sure I can do this without a map, but I'm going to try. If you're interested, feel free to grab a map and try to follow along. I hope I don't make this description too convoluted, so that it doesn't make sense even for those who live there. If I do, I think I can reasonably claim that it's not entirely my fault. As we go along, I think you can see why. (Oh well, blame me anyway, but I think you'll at least see that I didn't have anything to do with the geographic oddities of the path that the killer tornado chose to take.)

Draw a line starting from the middle of Ridgeway Street or, if you prefer, Plaza Towers Elementary School, northeast to just east of Telephone Road about halfway north and south between the Moore Medical Center and the Warren Theatre.

If you got it right, it should just cross the southeast corner of a big area Moore calls "The Tom Strouhal Little River Park". I don't know what all is included in this park though it seems to contain the usual park stuff ─ walking trails and so on ─ as well as maybe a cemetery and maybe a golf course. It definitely contains "Little River" which is really a creek; this creek comes out of the southeast corner of the park and continues on south and east till it leaves Moore. But as it leaves the park, and for the next quarter of a mile or so, it is flanked on both sides (yes, both sides) by a street called   South  Janeway Avenue  -  neither  East  Janeway  nor  West Janeway, nor any