ERNIE: THE GOOD NEIGHBOR, OR, BEFORE AND AFTER THE TORNADO IN WILBRAHAM

The last time we went to the cabin in Wilbraham, before the tornado, we found a letter from Ernie, our good neighbor.  The letter, too, was lost in the tornado's onslaught, but I remember its words.  Ernie wrote that he had blown the leaves that had surrounded the cabin (and they were in piles that reached to the roof), he had blown them away from the structure so that there would the cabin would be in no danger of fire, and, he added with joy, that there were two eggs in the birds nest on our front porch.   Ernie had called us mid-winter to tell us that he had gone up to the cottage in the deep winter snows, dragging a ladder, and pulled snow off the roof of the cabin to prevent the roof from caving in.  And Ernie, good neighbor that he is, called my husband yesterday to say that he had salvaged as many of the books as he could from under the pile of rubble. What Ernie didn't know is that books, once soaked with mud and rain, could not be salvaged.  Ernie, our good neighbor from the other end of Peak Road, had once again risked his 82 year old life for us.