1939-08-25 Over the Rainbow

Claudy Osborn
Colbert County, Alabama, circa 1939.

In the summer of 1939 a twelve year old girl named Claudy Osborn sat transfixed in a hot, crowded, north Alabama movie theater as Judy Garland* sang these words:

Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby

Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why, can't I?

Claudy must have felt that "Dorothy", the farm girl from Kansas, was singing just for her. Claudy was the youngest of eleven children born to Columbus Allen Osborn and wife, Nancy Isobel Romans, She had known no other life than one of poverty in the midst of the greatest economic depression the world had ever known.

The Ritz Theatre, Sheffield, Colbert County, Alabama.

She loved her family and her many aunts, uncles and cousins. Her roots in the red sandy soil of Colbert County, Alabama, ran as deep as cotton in the fields surrounding her home. But she knew that the world was bigger than North Alabama. The movies had shown her a world she could only dream of. But someday, somehow, she knew she would find that world.

It would be sooner than she ever imagined, and she wouldn't need to follow a yellow brick road to get there. When the time came to leave she just boarded a train in Sheffield that would take her to Chattanooga, Tennessee and beyond, to a place she could even not find on the map. Along the way she met others who, like her, were making the journey to this mysterious place in hopes of a better life. All they knew was that this "OZ" was hidden somewhere over the rainbow in the hills of East Tennessee.

Judy Garland on "Over the Rainbow"

"'Over the Rainbow' has become part of my life. It's so symbolic of everybody's dreams and wishes that I'm sure that's why some people get tears in their eyes when they hear it. I've sung it thousands of times and it's still the song that's closest to my heart." – Judy Garland, in a letter to composer Harold Arlen.

The Munchkin from Colbert County

Claudy Osborn may not have known it, but one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of OZ came from Tuscumbia, another Colbert County town only a few miles west of Claudy's home. She was a fifteen year old named Margaret Williams who played the role of one of the "Flower Pot Munckins", as well as one of the "Sleepy Head Munchkins". You may get a glimpse of her at minute 1:21 in the video below. She's wearing a pink dress with a light blue flower pot on her head. The nest of Sleepy Head Munchkins can be seen at minute 4.07.

Margaret Williams
Flower Pot Munchkin

Sleepy Head Munchkins

Alabama Tornadoes

Tornado Map for Colbert County, Alabama.
1953 through 2015, plus the big tornado of 1874.

In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy Gale and Toto were transported (along with the farmhouse of Uncle Henry and Auntie Em) to the Land of Oz by a giant tornado. As fantastic as such a thing may seem to us, it must have struck young Claudy Osborn as completely plausible. That's because Alabama and Oklahoma historically have more category F5 tornadoes (Fujita Scale) than any other states in the Union, and the Northwest part of Alabama where young Claudy lived was the worst area in the state. When I was a small boy I remember that my mother was always scared of large black thunderstorms out of fear that a tornado might form and blow us all away.

1892 train wreck on the same bridge
destroyed by the tornado of 1874.

The earliest reported tornado for the area where my mother grew up that I have been able to find occurred at 6:00 P.M. on November 22, 1874. It developed 5 miles South of Tuscumbia and traveled 23 miles in a Northeasterly direction to "Brickville". It had sustained winds of over 200 miles per hour which destroyed many, many homes and "mansions". Over one third of the entire town of Tuscumbia was leveled. Some passengers were injured when the train they were riding was derailed as it hit what was left of a railroad bridge that had been destroyed by the giant twister only minutes before. You can read the November 28, 1874, New York Times article about the disaster here.

Of course Claudy had not yet been born at the time of that monstrous storm. However, she was ten years old in 1936 when a category F3 tornado formed on the Mississippi border near Red Bay and traveled Easterly 25 miles leaving a path of destruction across the Alabama counties of Colbert and Franklin. Try to imagine what went through Claudy mind as she watched a very terrified Dorothy and Toto carried away by the twisting, roaring, tornado that filled the screen of the Ritz Theatre on that summer evening in 1939 only two years after F3 storm described above.