A Tornado Tale

One of our best friends, Norma was in town from Cape May and we met for a beverage at the Vault in Yardley, along with her awesome sister Greta. It was there that every phone in the place blew up.

I assumed it was an amber alert—same warning sound. But word quickly spread that we were under a tornado warning.

Warning is serious. that means an actual tornado has been spotted close by, either on the ground or on radar. We had paid our tab and just gotten up to leave when the phones reached fever pitch. Greta lives minutes from Yardley, so she and Nerm quickly departed for her place and made it home without incident.

I was less enthusiastic about travel, since we had to go the same direction the storms were coming from and cross the river. I was struggling to locate the storm on radar on my nearly-dead phone, information I needed to make decisions. That’s when Beth and I both came to the same realization; hey, we’re in a bank that was built at the turn of the 20th century. This place is dynamite proof. And it has a basement. Let’s stay here.

Might as well have another beer, a short pour. Kudos to Nick the bartender—a lot of people had the same plan and he was really busy, but managed to keep a spirited conversation about beer and weather running the whole time. He’s good.

Things seemed to calm down after that. We decided to brave the road. I turned south from Vault since the Scudder Falls bridge is messed up with construction, planning to cross the river at Morrisville.

We had just about reached the turn for the Calhoun Street when our phones blew up again.

“What’s it say?” I asked. “It says don’t be where we are,” came Mrs. Emma’s reply. But she’d already hatched a plan; the Interwebs say there’s a brewery in Morrisville. And it was allegedly open.

Allegedly, the operative word. We arrived but the door was bolted. That put us in the middle of town, without a shelter plan. Now what?

Joe’s Mill Hill!

It was expedience, really. The closest place I could think of since I don’t really know Morrisville. We shot across the Trenton Makes and found a place to park.

It was a ‘Cheers’ moment. We hadn’t been inside the Mill Hill in 30 years, but were welcomed like best friends. “Wow! You made it! In a tornado!” came the greetings from the small but enthusiastic ensemble gathered at the bar.

I said something along the lines of—we figured this place has been here for centuries, it’s probably already weathered worse. That’s when Jim, one of the regulars, took us down to see the basement. “You picked the right place,” he said as we made our way into what looked like a dark cave. “You got nothing to worry about,” he continued, as we fumbled around looking for a light switch.

Finding none, I switched on my phone flashlight to reveal a fortuitous sight: a small, long room, practically carved from rock. It’s not, but that’s what it looked like. The walls are made of massive blocks of stone, hand-hewn in the era of building things to last. It wasn’t just a basement. It was a cavern.

Jim wasn’t kidding. All the times we’d been to the Mill Hill, I never even knew about the downstairs—a well-loved live music venue. Many bands have rocked these rock walls.

So we settled in with a barley beverage, upstairs. The Mill Hill—its official new name—is a lot nicer than it was when it was Joe’s. It’s brighter, cleaner and with an updated, open plan. Amanda, the bartender, was a joy—and never the least bit worried about the storm. After all, the building has stood on this spot since 1836, when it opened as a pharmacy. It turned out to be a damned-near perfect plan. The weather passed to the north and south, so we didn’t have to retreat to the basement, but it was there, just in case.

Beers of the evening: from Vault, Burn Rate Mexican hot chocolate stout, Public Offering IPA, Of Hops & Clouds (Double) IPA. At the Mill, some local treats: Brotherton’s most-solid IPA from Shamong and Hazy Cosmic Jive, a very tasty IPA from Red Tank in Red Bank. I think Mrs. Emma also tasted Yards’ Philthy hazy IPA from Philly.

Thanks to all our weather nerd friends who checked on us throughout the night. It was an interesting night. But the pursuit of beer kept us safe.

Beer, is there anything you can’t do?
—Homer Simpson

=S

TO BE CONTINUED

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