"I still haven’t figured out why the house had two doors on the front of it, just a few feet apart."

That seemed to be a style. My grandparents' house had two front doors opening to the front porch and so did our "new" house built during WWII.

Leaving home because of rain storms: When my father and uncles were away in service, I can remember my mother waking us up and our getting fully dressed, with raincoats/hats/boots, whenever there was a big storm. If there was a lot of lightning, we headed down to my two aunts’ house (a sort of duplex), on foot, with a kerosene lantern, through the scary lightning. For a long time after my father was out of the Navy, we still were awakened to get dressed if it was a particularly bad storm, but we didn't leave home.