A hard-shelled edginess shrouds the word. The mind conjures images of a raging tempest seizing unsuspecting victims along with their homes, cars, cows, chickens, horses and buggies and hurling them across the county.

Yet the community of Cyclone, east of Temple, did not get its name from a storm.

No major whirlwind ever caused widespread damage to Cyclone anytime in its 125 years, according to most sources, although two twisters in the 20th century ruffled its edges.

In June 1904 the Rosebud News reported winds so severe that it moved the new Lutheran Church 25 feet off its foundations.

“Despite its name, the place has never known a severe windstorm before,” the article said. “The wind assumed cyclonic proportions for a brief period and damaged several other buildings, no person, however, being injured.”

A twister blew down Gustav Schneider’s farmhouse in 1943. No other damage was reported in Cyclone. His son, Rolf Schneider, 84, now resides in a newer ranch-style home in the same spot at an address on Twister Road. But Schneider said the road got its name from so many twists and turns, not the storm.

Legend says the settlement received its name along with a post office after area citizens met to christen the community in 1886. The over-lengthy oratory led someone to remark that the meeting was so windy they should call the town Cyclone.

The community today is a scattered collection of neatly kept farms and homes located 14 miles east of Temple along FM 964, also called Cyclone Road. Several Czech and German families settled the area about 1883.

In 1904 the community’s population grew to its peak at 102. The post office closed in 1906. Cyclone’s size diminished over the next century. The 2000 census reported a population of 45.

Eleanor Kohut Rusnak, 82, has vivid memories from its past. Ms. Rusnak’s father, J.V. Kohut, owned the Cyclone Store.

“He bought it in 1917 and sold it in 1946,” she said.

She said the family lived in a roomy single story frame house right behind the store. On one side they sold general merchandise and groceries. A saloon in a separate building on the other side had a pool table. Locals came for a beer in the evening after work to relax and socialize, she said.

Kohut let the surrounding neighbors use the old hand crank phone in the store. Ms. Rusnak said her father also dispensed over-the-counter remedies such as Paregoric. The nearest doctor was in Westphalia so Kohut’s talents were appreciated.

“He had a knack for prescribing the right thing,” Ms. Rusnak said.

“We sold everything from cream and eggs to cookies and candy,” she said. “I started helping out around the store as a girl of 5. I candled eggs and counted them, swept the floor and pumped gas for customers.”

A black and white photo from the era seemingly tells a story. Eleanor, then 18, leans against one of the gas pumps out front. She gazes into space as a breeze pulls playfully at the hem of her summer frock. Her father and her younger brother, Lansing, stand separated from her a short distance away.

It could portray a young woman thinking about leaving a pastoral setting for the excitement of the big city.

When asked, Ms. Rusnak laughs softly.

“The photo was taken in 1944,” she said. “I married Ervin Rusnak July 15, 1945. We had a lovely garden wedding.”

She said Rusnak was draft age during World War II. He joined the U.S. Air Force and was sent to aviation mechanics school.

“He excelled at that. He worked on B-29 bombers.”

She said his first job offer after the war was with Braniff Airways in Dallas. They made the move in 1948. Two years later they built a house in Irving to be closer to his job. Ms. Rusnak still lives there today.

“Ervin and I didn’t stay in Cyclone because we were neither one farmers,” she said. “After the war my dad wanted me to take over the store and Ervin’s parents wanted him to take over their farm at Ratibor. Neither of us wanted to do that.”

She said her dad sold the store in 1946 and moved into Temple to manage an Irish café. He later retired.

Rolf Schneider said he attended school with Ms. Rusnak.

“She was about two grades behind me,” he said.

The school taught first grade through seventh grade in a three-room clapboard building. Afterward the two attended Rogers High School. The bus stopped in front of the store.

Schneider said the Cyclone Store sat at the hub of activity - though nothing remains today to show for it. A blacksmith shop owned by Joe Bartek and a repair garage were within a hundred feet, he said.

Woodmen of the World fraternal lodge had a wood frame meeting hall about 300 feet behind the store to the west. And a cotton gin was a hundred yards to the northeast. The Cyclone Store burned in 1968 and the cotton gin in the mid-1990s.

A wood frame café sits today where the store used to be and barbecue meals are available on weekends, Schneider said.

Schneider said his father, Gustav, who was born in Frankfort, Germany, in 1863, was 61 when his wife, Margarete, gave birth in October 1924 to twins - Rolf and Heinz. He summoned the doctor from Westphalia.

“He told my father that his fee was $15 to deliver a baby, but since there were two he would give a discount and deliver both for $25,” Schneider said with a chuckle.

Schneider, who is retired from a lifetime of farming, tends the Cyclone Cemetery located at a fork in the road a couple of hundred feet from the site of the old store.

“The earliest grave I’ve found there is marked D. Lagrone - born in 1810, died in 1872,” he said. “The last burial there was Annie T. Casey. She was born in 1866 and died in 1945. No one else has been buried there since.”

Schneider said he is looking for a replacement caretaker for the graves. His age makes it increasingly difficult.

Ms. Rusnak said she looks back on her youth and wants her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to know what it was like.

“I was able to have a good life growing up in a small farming community,” she said.

She walked to school. She played first base on the ball team. She was a 4-H girl.

“And I was blessed to have my father,” she said. “He was so kind-hearted.”

Ms. Rusnak said her father lost money by extending credit to farmers who couldn’t pay it back. She said she often wondered how he was such a success.

“He was the most wonderful man - and so smart,” she said. “He was doctor, lawyer, merchant and chief.”