Was it the truck or something else that saved them?

When winds rage, debris flies and dirt turns to darts, take cover.

No, I'm not writing about the McHenry County state's attorney's race.

Dolores and Robert Cook of Algonquin got way too close and personal with a tornado last week and are still reeling.

"We have never experienced anything as scary as that in our entire lives," said Dolores, who is 71. "We both had some powerful angels on our shoulders."

Their shopping jaunt to Kenosha turned into dodge-the-debris terror as the tornado that hit near Harvard, then Kenosha on Jan. 7 put the Cooks smack in the middle of it. A 2-by-8 board smashed the passenger side of the windshield into the dash, just missing Dolores. "When that board came through the window, someone said, 'No, we don't need her yet,'" she said.

They didn't see the twister, only a wall of rain that forced them to stop their Dodge Ram pickup truck along Highway 50. With the wind whipping that wall of rain full swirl, their truck only moved a little side to side even as the windows blew out. They sound like excellent prospects for a new Dodge Ram commercial.

When paramedics arrived, they found the Cooks covered in glass, rattled and very glad to be alive. Very.

"When they saw the board through the windshield, I think they expected a fatality. We have to be thankful our truck held us," Dolores said.

They're also very thankful to the Wisconsin rescue crews. "People were very nice, very helpful," Dolores said.

One time up close with a tornado was enough, both said.

"I always wanted to see one," Robert said. "I don't anymore."

Just the ticket

Are you a Chicago Bulls fan? Dundee-Crown High School Athletic Director Dick Storm tells me their Athletic Hall of Fame group has just the thing for you.

Thanks to Woodfield Lexus and the Resnick Auto Group in Schaumburg, the group is raffling off four second-row seat tickets and a premier parking pass package for the Bulls vs. Phoenix Suns game noon Jan. 27 at the United Center.

Those tickets have a face value of $120 each. You can buy one raffle ticket for $5 or three for $10 at this Saturday's Dundee-Crown boys basketball game against McHenry at the Dundee-Crown fieldhouse. The sophomore game starts at 5:30 p.m. with the varsity tipoff following. If you can't make the game, call (847) 426-1317 for tickets.

Keeps on giving

Bonnie and John Jilek of Sleepy Hollow went for a hike at Raceway Woods last weekend and came across a hidden red ornament dangling from a tree. They wanted to share it with Cub Scout Pack 154 so the scouts could redeem it along with the several dozen baubles the pack turned in to raceway stewards Donna and Jack Redmer. Their fun ornament hunt just keeps on giving. Turns out John Jilek is an Eagle Scout. How about that?

Imagine

Bill Reddy of the Blue Lotus Temple lures us to their fundraiser breakfast with the promise of warm breezes coming off the water and beaches of the Indian Ocean and the cool morning fog hovering above the tea plantations in the mountains.

He also promises delicate and spicy, if you wish, breakfast foods from a menu including hoppers (rice pancakes), kiribat (coconut milk rice), roti (handmade bread with coconut), pongal (rice with mung beans, cashews, raisins and syrup) as well as pancakes and eggs at "Breakfast in Sri Lanka." They'll have three seatings at 8, 9, or 10 a.m. Jan. 26 at Congregational Unitarian Church, 221 Dean St., Woodstock. Call (815) 529-3710 or e-mail mail@bluelotustemple.org. Tickets are $7 for adults, $4 for children 11 and younger, free for kids younger than 5.

Baring my soul

A column I wrote last September about excessive expenses charged to taxpayers by McHenry County State's Attorney Lou Bianchi seems to have stirred all kinds of reaction in recent days.

And not just because it revealed the state's attorney was buying lunches, coffee, doughnuts, candy and more with taxpayer funds. Or because my column was mailed out to voters in recent weeks by the county's GOP chairman who bought reprints from this paper.

Some of you have wondered what I thought about a Sunday column written by Chris Krug, editor of the Northwest Herald, where I once worked. He claims the Daily Herald sold my soul by permitting my column to be sold as a reprint.

"Yes, the Daily Herald, in all its glory, sold one of its columnists' souls," Krug wrote. "For a few bucks."

He also wrote: "If you haven't committed this particular work to memory -- and I am guessing that you haven't -- it was a sharply slanted news story about McHenry County State's Attorney Louis Bianchi and his use (or perhaps misuse) of departmental expenses packaged as a column that the Daily Herald published on its front page in mid-September.

"Was it a great piece of journalism?

"It was a piece of something, for sure."

So what do I think of what he had to say?

I really don't know what to think.

I just hope Chris Krug enjoyed the lunches he and other Northwest Herald staffers have had with Lou Bianchi. County records show the state's attorney had taxpayers pay for two of those -- $34.96 at the Woodstock Public House July 15, 2005, and $48.69 at Pirro's April 16, 2007.

Krug has written that the newspaper picked up the tab for other meals his staff has had with Bianchi.

"Essentially, we've gone Dutch," Krug said.

So that's what you call it.