The 37 story Bank One Tower in downtown Fort Worth was trashed by a tornado that tore through the downtown in March 2000, causing half a billion bucks in damage to the city. It was too expensive for the old owners to fix so they sold it to new owners who planned to implode it but the EPA squealed and said that the building was full of dangerous asbestos that will kill everyone. After a year or two of clean up, they only found enough asbestos to fill up a 55 gallon drum. Nobody was happy about that but the government never apologizes for its screwups and rarely picks up the tab for its bad decisions. They're trying to turn it into condos now. Now that the boards are gone that replaced all the smashed windows maybe people will stop calling it the "Plank One Tower."

DFW weather has a biblical intensity. Usually a line of thunderstorms sweeps in from the northwest, raises hell for a half hour in an orgy of thunder and lightning with the occaisional hailstorm, and then leaves. An hour after the worst part of the storm, the sun is shining and the streets are drying.

I never believed those stories about giant hailstorms until I lived in DFW. Once I was sitting in my office at home in Fort Worth with the windows open when I heard something like a group of girls walking in clogs on the sidewalk. I looked out my door in time to see a melon-sized piece of jagged hail slam into the top of my garbage dumpster, making a sound like a big drum, and then go bouncing the hell up fifteen feet in the air. Had it hit me, it would have crushed my head like a grape.

When I picked my jaw up off my doorstep, I jumped in my car and drove it up under a tree until the icy assault from the sky stopped. I didn't look up because I didn't want to see it coming. In my neighborhood, it was common for people to jump in their cars when a bad thunderstorm rolled in and drive them under the nearest bridge to defend against killer hail.

They were holding a carnival down by the Trinity River called Riverfest. When I got back inside, the TV showed an image of guy with a bloodied bandage wrapped around his head in a news flash labeled "Riverfest Survivors." Families had been caught in the open and pounded by the hail. Some firemen and police officers had thrown themselves over young children to protect them. Ambulances were hauling the wounded away to the hospital.

For the next month, the streets were full of damaged cars. About every tenth car looked like a gang of kids had worked it over with ball peen hammers. About every fiftieth car had windows smashed out. I couldn't believe my eyes.

About every couple years, hail tears up a swatch of the DFW metroplex. Roofers come in from all over the South to spend about three months repairing the damage.