MOULTRIE, Ga. – The week started with planning on how to reopen for in-service dining.

Thursday afternoon, the folks who operate Elli Mae’s Kountry Cafe on Hwy. 133 just outside the Moultrie city limit were wondering about other, perhaps more important matters. Like when the power will be back running.

Above all, they were on their knees grateful that this was the worst damage done by the severe weather of the early afternoon.

Louise McMurphy, 96, lives in the trailer just behind the Kountry Cafe. Her family runs the restaurant, and that includes her daughter Virginia Neads and granddaughter Melissa Holt. When things got serious Thursday, when it was apparent something along the lines of a tornado was coming their way, they got Louise out of the trailer and into the Kitchen “in the nick of time.”

Harold McMurphy, Louise’s son, was also there eating in his truck (still trying to abide by the coronavirus pandemic guidelines). He was told by his wife and niece to quickly get inside.

“It about blowed me away with it,” McMurphy said about trying to get in the restaurant. “About couldn’t shut the door.”

When the worst of the weather ended, he checked the trailer and found part of the roof gone. It was the part over his mother’s bedroom. He also discovered several pine trees blown over. They were able to get a tarp over the opening in the trailer.

“I’m still in shock,” said Holt as it got later into the afternoon. “We got family pictures out of (the trailer). It’s so crazy how it come.”

“There was power lines everywhere,” said McMurphy. “It went on its way pretty quick towards Berlin.”

Holt was in the middle of serving take-out orders when the chaos began. She told the story of trying to help them get inside to safe cover. There was no structural damage to the Cafe, but they could point to how the neighboring peanut gin “looked like a bomb went through the top of it.”

“I thank God above He didn’t take my 96-year-old grandma,” said Holt with a show of emotion. “Two nights ago I slept in that bed with her.”

While considering their own plight, trees and power lines were down both across the highway and in the trailer park behind them. One particularly large tree was down cutting off nearby Edmondson Road.