It was a good old house, built by the calloused hands of anancestor more than 80 years ago.

Now it’s sagging and broken, destined for a burn.

The Jackson-Liberty Drive home of Loyd Star native W. D. Kimblewas picked up off its foundation and dropped shatteringly back toearth on New Year’s Eve, destroyed by the winds of a small tornadothat spawned out of that evening’s passing thunderstorms. Kimblelives in Bossier City, La., and uses the home sparingly, but hisLoyd Star relatives saw a den of family history crushed when thetwister jarred the empty old house off its blocks.

“My neighbor called me and said, ‘What happened to the house?’ Isaid, ‘Baby, it was fine when I left,'” said Clara Kimble, W. D.Kimble’s sister-in-law who lives one house down.

Clara said Lige Kimble – grandfather to W.D. and her husband,Paul – built the old house 85 or 90 years ago. Both men grew up inthe house before it was passed down to W.D.

The family has already gone through and removed the furnitureand valuables from the house, which is still perched atop a fewconcrete blocks on the western front side but rests in the dirt onthe east side.

The tornado appears to have picked up and dropped thesouthwestern corner of the house at least 8 feet back from its barefoundation blocks, leaving the northwestern corner to fall off itssupports. The shift bowed the floors, walls and ceilings, leavingthe house bent and sloping inside.

“It’s just like you’re drunk,” Clara said as she balanced on theslanting kitchen floor.

The big damage came from what the National Weather Serviceclassified as a little twister.

Lincoln County Civil Defense Director Clifford Galey said NWSdamage survey teams visited the county Monday and declared thedamage done by an EF1 tornado, the smallest rating on the EnhancedFujita Scale, which rates tornadoes on a scale of 1 through 5 basedon wind speed. The Loyd Star tornado that wrecked the Kimble housewas blowing winds of around 90 mph, he said.

“They found something that was twisted to make them determine itwas a tornado,” Galey said. “It caused basically sporadic damage.We had a couple of houses with shingles off the roof in the LoydStar area and we had a couple of pumphouses and tractor shedsdestroyed.”

Galey said the tornado apparently touched down near theintersection of Highway 550 and Ellzey Road and traveled northeastacross Jackson-Liberty Drive.

The twister was estimated to be about 50 yards wide, with a path2.5 miles long, Galley said. No one was aware there was a tornadoin the county until the NWS teams arrived, he said.

If the damage was sporadic, it was also selective. While theKimble house was knocked off its foundation by several feet, thehome’s front-porch swing was left intact, as were a couple ofchairs that sat undisturbed on the porch.

“It’s just pathetic how it done it,” Clara said.

Likewise, a wooden gazebo and a metal, single-car parking sheddirectly across the street from the Kimble home were undisturbed,while two small metal storage sheds directly behind the house werelikewise unmoved. But the winds felled a pair of large treesslightly north of the home.

One of those trees fell from the yard of Aaron Lofton, who livesacross the road from the Kimble home. He was in his home when thetornado struck.

“It probably didn’t last five seconds,” he said. “When it cameover it was just a big, ‘Whoof!’ Then it was gone.”

Lofton said he found clothing scattered in the woods behind hishome, apparently blown in from clotheslines by the twister.

There were no injuries and few other instances of propertydamage caused by the New Year’s Eve tornado, but of course any bigstorm causes Loyd Star residents to think back to April 6, 2003,when an EF2 tornado carved out a damage path 17 miles long and 5miles wide. Around 140 structures were destroyed or damaged in thatstorm.

“Seven years ago this house got it,” Clara Kimble said from herown front porch. “It tore the roof off this house with me standingright here in the door.”