Recovery from a natural disaster takes time. Sometimes years. Since the tornado hit southern Minnesota last March, people across the region have been working to make life normal, or at least comfortable. Over the next few months we will be visiting with some of the people of St Peter, to see how they are doing. Minnesota Public Radio's Lynette Nyman went back to meet cafe owner Tom Gravelin who is now living in a FEMA trailer. Tom Gravelin knows a lot of people in St. Peter. Those he knows best are artists, writers, and musicians...people who until recently had their own studios. Now they're knocking on the door of th
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LYNETTE NYMAN: Tom Gravlin knows a lot of people in St Peter. Those he knows best are artists, writers, and musicians, people who until recently had their own studios. Now they're knocking on the door of the cafe Gravlin co-owns. The cafe is one of the few performance spaces left after the tornado.
The high school will present its play there. Faculty from Gustavus Adolphus College will have readings. Music students from the college will practice on the piano that was tuned in anticipation of the new activity taking place, now that the cafe is open.
[PIANO MUSIC]
TOM GRAVLIN: The main reason it took us so long to reopen was probably because of the dirt being thrown all over walls, ceiling, and chairs, knickknacks. We have a wall of knickknacks, postcards, all had to be taken down. Everything had to be scrubbed from ceiling to floor.
Carpeting was full of glass shards that could not be vacuumed out. And everyone has been getting new carpet for the same reason, broken windows, glass being thrown all over, after all the tornado fun. So we have new carpet. And the tables were gouged. And we had to get some new table tops and pull glass out of the chairs and glass chunks out of the pews and out of the end of the piano. And it was just a mess, it was an absolute mess to clean up.
[PIANO MUSIC]
LYNETTE NYMAN: You've been wearing a different cap around town. Why is that?
TOM GRAVLIN: A different cap? Because I lost all of my old caps. I have lost all of my clothes, with the exceptions of the few things I had on and one or two things I grabbed. So I went shopping the other day and bought some new blue jeans, and some new T-shirts, and a new pair of shoes. And boy, oh boy, I have these spiffy outfit now and the new cap, yes, which is the Casey Jones engineer cap, striped cap. Casey was always my favorite, Casey and Roundhouse, I watched every day.
[PIANO MUSIC]
LYNETTE NYMAN: There were a few days when it seemed the cafe would never open, that Tom Gravlin would never move out, and then into the FEMA trailer recently placed adjacent to his destroyed home.
[PIANO MUSIC]
TOM GRAVLIN: I spent my first night in the trailer, waiting for the water to be turned on, waiting for the sewer to be hooked up, and the electricity to be hooked up, and then waiting for the key to be given to me.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Now, I heard a story that somebody tried to break into your trailer?
TOM GRAVLIN: Yes, as if I have anything left to steal, night before last, I believe it was. Someone, after 1:00 o'clock, had moved a few things, a couple of shirts, and a pair of shoes, and a sleeping bag, and things in here. So I know it happened after 1:00 o'clock.
Somebody tried to break in, found the latch, kind of pried open the next day, and just low-life bottom feeders. It's really a shame that people are that insensitive. And yeah, I don't have good words for that.
[PIANO MUSIC]
And today, I was taking my first shower in my new trailer, when all of a sudden, the water stopped. I had a head full of extremely fresh shampoo lather, and my beard was all lathered, and the rest of me was dripping wet, standing in a shower with no water coming out.
Found a pair of shorts, and put those on, and stomped outside, and was told that the city was down the street. And I stomped down there in my bare feet, and my dripping body, and my sudsy hair. And they had turned the water off, just as a test. They were just testing.
[PIANO MUSIC]
LYNETTE NYMAN: Have you changed in any way since the tornado?
TOM GRAVLIN: Oh, yes, of course, I have changed. Difficult to not change after going through that kind of storm. How? I'm not sure. I guess I'm too close to me to know how I've changed. My philosophy, I guess, has not changed.
My philosophy, although I can't really put it into two short sentences or 20 words or less, is a real basic philosophy of being alive and doing what human beings do, which is staying alive and doing what we're able to do. And that's what I'm doing now, is just doing what I can do, doing what I'm able to do.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Gravlin's plan to rebuild his home is slowly taking shape. I'm Lynette Nyman, in Saint Peter, Minnesota Public Radio.
[PIANO MUSIC]