While my family and I were ignorantly ignoring weather warnings, dining out at a burger place in Arnold, Mo. Many of my friends, (yes, I have friends and yes, more than one.) were diving for cover, or as my cubicle neighbor Ramesh was doing, watching a dream shatter.

Shredded leaves behind my workplace.

Arnold is on the south side of St. Louis County, The storm whipped through the middle, hitting Maryland Heights, where I happen to work, the hardest. This wasn’t a gentle storm, it wasn’t even a typical torrential,  electric April thunderstorm. Sure there were wind gusts up to 70mph downtown that blew down a beer garden tent and killed a poor guy, but this one had the meteorologists really harking about hail. Big hail, NASTY big, baseball sized hail.

Hail is ice. Layers of it. As a frozen pellet falls, high lower level winds can shoot it back upwards in a storm system, coating it with moisture, which freezes at high altitudes, and then falls again. If the upward air currents are strong, as they are in a big thundercloud, they get tossed back up again. This repeats over and over, layer after layer until the stone is simply too heavy to be thrown back up again. Nasty thunderheads can produce ridiculously large stones. These stones are solid ice, hard and heavy. Dissected one can expose the concentric layers of ice formation.

Golf ball sized hail can be nasty, causing windshield and window damage and some serious injuries to exposed humans. We didn’t have golf ball sized hail, ours were different balls altogether. Think tennis balls and baseballs, yes indeed, officially confirmed, baseball-sized hail.

Yeah, ouch!

In some cases it appeared that smaller stones had bonded together to form stupid-large chunks. Tree shredders, car-destroyers.

If you live or work in the heavy-hit area, you lost any skylights you had. You also are likely on the phone with your insurance adjuster and a rental company. Forget it though, last check there were very few rental cars available in St. Louis.

So my poor friend Ramesh watched as the hail slammed down, the sound of rocks hitting his roof, sounds of windows and windshields being shattered.

Just a few short months ago, Ramesh took delivery of a new car. He’s a pretty frugal, sensible guy, a devoted husband and doting father to his young daughter. He is not at all a flashy, big spender.

For several years he’s dreamed of one really nice thing, a new car. He owns a late model, practical Hyundai, but Ramesh, like many men, had dreams of something a little flashier. He scrimped and saved for a few years, never sacrificing any family need. He put away a little here, a little there until finally he could afford it, and finally, proudly, almost guiltily ordered himself a nice BMW.

Guys like us make decent money. But not at all one-percent’er kind of money. Most of us drive reasonable, reliable, practical cars, family cars, except for the few single guys who may do a bit better. Personally I’m rather satisfied with my 100k-mile, 2004 Cavalier, but who wouldn’t be? Actually cars are just not my thing, they are a tool, a necessity, and in many cases little more than a metal money-pit. Some guys really, really like cars. Another friend of mine scrimped, saved and sacrificed all other luxuries to buy a new Jaguar XJR. It’s pretty much the only really, really nice thing he owns and he absolutely spoils that car. It is a pretty car, he’s taken me to lunch in it a few times. I have to admit, it’s an ego-trip I could probably get used to.

Ramesh works hard and takes very good care of his small family. This car though meant a lot. He researched, compared, researched some more, months went by figuring out just the right options before he finally pulled the trigger on that deal.

A couple of months ago he finally took delivery. He fiddled and fussed with every detail. He shined it up and parked it away from the heavy traffic spots in the parking lot.

Unfortunately though, Ramesh lives in Maryland Heights.

He watched from his window, completely helpless as the sudden storm dropped frozen chunks into his neighborhood. He watched, helplessly, as they slammed with a fury into his pride and joy, not once, not twice, but scores of fist-sized icebergs crashed into the pristine BM’er’s windows and polished metal.

The new car, with less than three thousand miles driven, was reduced in a matter of five minutes or less, to a punctured and pelted wreck. Big round dents, some the size of sledge hammer blows, dozens of them. The front badge, torn away, the windows and windshield shattered by multiple mighty blows. The storm didn’t spare the trusty Hyundai either, if anything it suffered even more.

I asked him, and even being the proud man that he is, admitted that yes indeed, he cried. I can’t blame him. Sure it wasn’t a physical injury or loss of a real family member or anything like that, it was a car. Just a car, but seriously, have you ever worked really, really hard for something? A thing you and other people admire and respect, and then had that thing simply bashed up in front of you?

I’d cry too.