 I spent my boyhood in small Iowa towns. One afternoon, my mother and I were on the back steps, gazing down across the highway at cornfields that seemed to go on forever. Suddenly the air got eerily still. Look, Mom said. A couple of miles away, a funnel cloud eased itself down and began winding across the countryside, luckily in the other direction. I sat there awed and transfixed and have loved watching tornadoes ever since.