Members of the Neal family of Paxton — Brianna, Danny, Evelyn (bottom left) and Braylin (bottom right). Courtesy of Danny Neal
We resume our narrative from two weeks ago, when our young protagonist first encountered the unfiltered might of Mother Nature. At just 3 years old, my world was still shaped by the simple cautions of early childhood — warnings against playing with electrical sockets, getting too close to the road, or opening the door to strangers. These simple rules were the boundaries of danger as I knew them. But life rarely follows rules that favor the innocent.
At only 37 months old, I experienced a revelation far beyond my years: the world could be cruel, chaotic and deeply unfair. Unlike an adult whose understanding is buffered by age and knowledge, or a soul from an unknown land arriving with the context of experience read from publications abroad, I faced this reality with the vulnerability of a child who still believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. As I sit here at 37 years old now, I can look back and see how I reached this path in my life. There are some twists and turns I wish I could have smoothed out a little better, but at the end of the day what I saw on that fall day in 1990 would shape my identity.
This story is not just about nature’s wrath, but about the first crack in a child’s sense of safety, and the harsh truth that not all villains lose.
After more than an hour wandering through the skeletal remains of what had once been a thriving small town, we returned to our van. I was only 3 years old, but questions filled my head — questions too large for someone my size. I was an inquisitive child — as I still am — and the scene around me felt like something from a dream or a movie gone wrong. To me, this was a strange new world. People appeared to live in the rubble, amid shattered walls and broken memories. I didn’t understand why so many were crying as they spoke with my grandfather. Why were they so upset? They chose to live in these broken homes. It reminded me of the dinosaurs from “The Land Before Time,” specifically those that lived in the “Mysterious Beyond” — distant and dangerous lands where nothing felt quite right.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that we were not exploring. We weren’t on some anthropological mission to see how others lived. We were standing in the aftermath of a disaster.
My grandfather, a seasoned photojournalist for the Chicago Tribune, had been sent here to document a tragedy that had captured international attention. This was no local story. It wasn’t even national. It was global and I was standing at ground zero, unknowingly witnessing history through the unfiltered lens of a child. In that moment, I was too young to grasp the scale of what had happened, or the responsibility carried by those documenting it. But the experience etched itself deep into my memory.
What began as a confusing visit to a broken land would later become one of the earliest signs that the world isn’t always kind, and that sometimes the stories we live through shape us more than we can understand at the time.
“How do people live like this?” I wondered.
It wasn’t until I returned to our home 30 minutes away that my innocence was broken.
Sunday car rides with my grandparents were a comforting ritual. They often ended with dinner at my house, where stories flowed as easily as the delicious, homecooked meals. That evening was no different — until it was. I was excited, eager to share what I had seen earlier that day: a strange place where people seemed to live in dirt, broken wood and shattered glass. They looked sad, their faces long and voices low, as they quietly picked through debris, holding onto bits of their past like fragile souvenirs.
To me, it was all so unusual, even fascinating. I chattered on about the “land” we had visited, describing it with all the innocent curiosity of a 3-year-old. That’s when my parents gently broke the news: “Dan, people don’t choose to live like that. They had homes and nice things, just like we do. That’s what happened after a storm hit.”
The idea that a simple storm could take away everything — homes, happiness and entire lives — was too enormous to process. I didn’t know it at the time, but that conversation marked the end of a certain kind of innocence. It was the moment I realized the world could change in an instant and that safety, once taken for granted, was not a guarantee. What began as a childhood anecdote became something far more lasting: the moment I began to understand loss, not just the kind you read about, but the kind you feel in your bones.
That was it. Just one sentence. Simple, honest and meant to comfort. But in my extremely literal young mind, it triggered something else entirely: fear. That casual explanation, so well-meaning and matter of fact, planted a seed of dread that grew into a fear no one could have foreseen.
A fear that someday, without warning, the storm would come for me, too.
Danny Neal of Paxton is owner of Illinois Storm Chasers LLC and deputy coordinator of the Ford County Emergency Management Agency. He can be reached at dnealweather@outlook.com.