PARTHENON -- David Walker bought his home here a quarter-century ago to save the historic general store from demolition. On Tuesday, he began figuring out where to live after the house was ravaged by a storm that hit the small Newton County town just before midnight.
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Walker said he and his 15-year-old son, Tobey, and a few friends were standing in the kitchen on the second floor when the worst of the storm blew through. The wind was howling like a train, Walker said. But then dirt started to swirl in the air inside their house, and he felt shards of glass pelting the back of his head, he said.
So he gathered up his son and their friends to find a way to safety. Right when he slammed the kitchen door shut, Walker said, a section of their outer stone wall caved in. The group ran down a hallway to a window and shimmied down a tree to escape, he said.
Once outside, Walker said he and Tobey first tried another person's storm shelter, but the space was full. They couldn't get to their Airstream camper, so Walker eventually led his son to the underside of a nearby bridge, where they stayed on sleeping pads for most of the night.
When they returned, the pair saw that a large chunk of a wall and the roof of the 7,000-square-foot building had collapsed. Rubble towered above the two Tuesday morning as they surveyed what was once their home.
The building once was a well-trafficked general store and had housed a hotel on the upper level, Walker said. When he bought it for $12,000 about 25 years ago, Walker said, he converted it into a sort of artistic "fun house."
Toward the front of the home are slender poles of bamboo, dolls, paintings and other randomly acquired objects that decorated the inside walls. Deeper inside the home, largely untouched by Monday's wind and rain, are Walker's drum set and music studio. Walker said he constructed the home as a "real magical" place for himself and Tobey, who are both artists.
When the storm blew through town, Tobey was mostly worried his hundreds of sketches would be damaged, he said. Luckily, his room sits at the center of the dwelling and the artwork was largely untouched.
As David Walker scanned the room, taking in the damage, he said it was luck that Tobey was with him when the storm rolled in.
"If he had gone to his car, he would have been dead," Walker said, gesturing toward his son.
"We don't even have a scratch," he added.
Still, Walker said, it was not easy to see his years of work on the house lying at his feet. He has no plans to rebuild, he said, and he and Tobey will likely live in their camper at the back of the property for the time being.
"It hasn't sunk in yet," Walker said. "I haven't cried yet."
Metro on 03/08/2017