CMT News  OFFSTAGE: How Bunk Beds Saved Toby Keith's Life Toby
Keith Toby Keith  Toby Keith's mother must be very, very strong.
That's what I was thinking when Keith described what she did
when tornadoes got close to his childhood home in Moore, Okla.
"Every spring, we'd have tornadoes. I've been through it a
hundred times in my life," he told me when he was in Chicago
recently. "When I was a kid, the sirens went off one time, and
then our roof was torn up. My mom came in and said, 'Move to the
center of the house.' We had bunk bed mattresses, so she would
take a mattress and put it in a circle and stick it in the
closet. Then we'd jump in there, and she'd throw the other bunk
bed mattress over the top of us and shut the door."  That's how
Keith took cover as a kid and how he learned to survive living
in the tornado alley of central Oklahoma. But the tornadoes on
May 20 hit the town harder than all the previous ones, killing
24 and destroying and devastating so much of the community. And
just like his mother