20.

Some people—the geezers especially—have called it a destruction of Biblical proportions, like Sodom and Gomorrah or the Big Flood. That’s retrospect talking, hindsight making things 20/20 when actually a little blurred vision is exactly what we all need.

The first point of contention: Kalamazoo was no den of sin, not even in the late 1990s. So the idea that the citizens were being admonished with destruction is ridiculous. Second point: God had already cleaned house in 1980 with a tornado that danced down Main Street and decimated the city to the tune of twenty million dollars. How much sin can redevelop in less than two decades? Rebuild first, sodomize and whore later—that’s the general rule.

In short, don’t buy the Biblical punishment theory. Unless, of course, God has evolved since the days when the Bible was written, and He now cares less about sex and gambling than irresponsible pollutants and a dearth of culture, entertainment, and employment options. Which is certainly possible.

However, I prefer to think of Audrey’s feat as the slowest disaster ever recorded, the rare case of a natural force exhibiting a measure of personability. She was a tornado that lollygagged, that took extended cigarette breaks, that played Parcheesi with the folks whose lives were being erased. She was the atomic bomb, except this time the Hiroshimites gathered around the fireball as it swelled, set out lawn chairs, donned radiation-proof goggles,sipped hot sake, and commented upon the Armageddon between stifled yawns. She was the gentlest earthquake, the softest tsunami. The loveable time-lapse hurricane.

The main difference is that ultimately, Kalamazoo asked for this disaster. In writing.