Farm heavily damaged in '85
MIDDLESEX TWP — Elizabeth Bartley was hulling strawberries at the sink on her farm off East Cruikshank Road on May 31, 1985, waiting for an impending storm that thickened the humid air and brought a strange silence to the late afternoon.
“All of a sudden, mud and water came through the screen,” she recalled. “Then there was a wild, terrible wind.”
She dropped her knife and ran to the dining room, where she crawled under the family's large table.
For four or five terrifying minutes, an F4 tornado raged overhead.
Bartley cowered under the heavy table, wondering what could be happening.
“I didn't even think of a tornado,” she said. “We don't get tornados around here.”
After the deafening noise ceased, Bartley immediately thought of her husband, Vern, who was out in the barn at the dairy cow operation his ancestors started in the early 1800s.
As she ran for the barn, she noticed all 13 of the large trees surrounding the house were laid down in a circular pattern like dominoes. Half the barn was demolished, a silo was down, heavy farm machinery was tossed throughout the fields, the detached garage had all but disappeared and there was no sign of the original Bartley family log home on the property.
Vern Bartley was in the barn when he noticed the waning daylight had turned black as night, and black dust filled the air. He also recalls hearing a sound like a freight train that was barreling straight toward him.
He glanced out of the barn, and saw every other pine tree on Bartley Lane exploding into splinters after being laid down parallel with the ground.
“I decided at that time, I better get behind another wall in the barn,” Vern said.After the twister proceeded east, cutting a destructive path to Alderson Road, the Saxon Golf Course and Route 356, Vern tried to escape the barn.“I couldn't get out by the milkhouse, so I climbed out through the silo,” he recalled.Wondering how Elizabeth had fared inside, he started toward the house at a trot. The couple met each other halfway between the house and barn.“I was shaking, and he was shaking,” Elizabeth said. “And everything was in a shambles.”Vern said 20 of the farm's chickens were killed, but their 18 to 20 head of dairy cattle and several sheep were spared. The stunned animals had bumps and welts on their bodies, and the couple's three or four cats, though alive, were unrecognizable.“They looked like they were skinned,” Elizabeth said, referring to the felines' loss of fur in the twisting winds.Vern recalled the couple's 1978 Chevy sedan had been lifted into the garage's second floor, but 10-pound feed bags laying right next to the car were untouched.Because telephone and electrical lines were down, and most local roads were blocked by fallen trees and debris, the Bartleys were unable to let their grown children or other family know they had survived the ordeal. Vern's brother eventually made it to the farm on foot.Elizabeth said the neighbors got together and came to the farm, which was among the properties most severely damaged from the tornado.“A lot of them weren't hit,” she said. “It just took a path right through our farm.”Vern said one neighbor saw the tornado coming and pushed her young daughter down the steps and under a bed in the seconds before it hit.“That whole house disappeared,” he said. “They were in the basement, so they didn't get hurt.”A walk through the large farm's fields turned up silverware, coins, a neighbor child's crib, a receipt from an Evans City business and several motorcycle parts from the Kupec Cycle Shop on Route 8 near Kilgallen Road. The shop was destroyed in the storm.The neighboring Fritz farm took the Bartley's cattle and milked them all summer until a new barn could be built and pastures fenced in. Another neighboring farm loaned Vern a combine and other implements to grow his corn, wheat and hay in the summer of 1985.Vern said traversing the farm was perilous, as roofing nails laid all over the ground.The Bartleys were amazed when about 100 teenagers from the First Presbyterian Church arrived to clean up the property. The township followed with heavy equipment to remove debris.The Bartleys were without electricity for three days, and Vern used some old-fashioned ingenuity to provide water for the house. He drove a surviving tractor to the well and hooked a belt to the well pump and the tractor motor. The system pumped enough water from the well in the days after the tornado to sustain the couple until electric service was restored.They said insurance paid about $25,000, which was not enough to replace and rebuild everything that was lost. Elizabeth said the insurance agent on the night of the tornado brought food and a large dispenser of lemonade from McDonalds.Elizabeth's parents, now deceased, lived in a mobile home on Watter Station Road in Forward Township, which was also hit by the twister.“They ran for the farmhouse, but they couldn't make it,” she said. “They laid down under a pine tree.”The elderly couple survived the storm, as the tree swayed wildly but did not fall.“We had no warning,” Elizabeth said. “We didn't have (a TV or radio) on,”For many months after the tornado, tractors driving in the fields and pastures got flat tires from roofing nails that remained hidden in the soil.The Bartleys were able to rebuild and replace the most important buildings and equipment on the farm, and their house survived with some broken windows and chimney damage. About five years ago, they turned ownership of the farm over to their son, Mark.After the storm, the couple replaced the downed trees with saplings after the storm, which are now full grown. The horses and beef cattle lazily munch hay.“I still get nervous in a storm,” Elizabeth said. “As soon as the high winds come up, I get petrified.”
