Daniel C. Fitzgerald > Quotes

“Captain Ayers reported that lightning struck his house first, and then the tornado wrecked it. Since the wind blew all of his books, papers, and clothing away, the Captain “consoled himself with the thought that some poor stranger could enjoy a clean shirt and respectable literature.”
― Daniel Fitzgerald, Sound and Fury: A History of Kansas Tornadoes, 1854-2013

“Julian Street in his book, Abroad At Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures, painted a grim picture of Western Kansas as he traveled across the area in 1914. Street saw only a drab, treeless wasteland of brown and gray---“nothing, nothing, nothing”--images of incessant wind, violent cyclones, dust storms, and tragic desolation. As the train he was riding approached the small town of Monotony, which he felt was appropriately named, he listened sympathetically to the remarks of a fellow passenger: “God! How can they stand living out here? I’d rather be dead!”
― Daniel Fitzgerald, Sound and Fury: A History of Kansas Tornadoes, 1854-2013