Lightning Strikes

Chimney still wet from installation. Permanent burns on the shingles.

A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

Dad and I had just finished work on the top half of the chimney on Amie’s and my little house. Dad put a sheet of plastic over the top. He tied it on with the plumb line we used on the chimney.

He said, “It will keep the cement from drying too quickly.” He suggested I squirt some water up there after supper.

I didn’t quite understand how that would help on a hot day like today, but I said,

“Good idea. I sure appreciate your help on this project, Dad.”

“That’s all right Ron, but I wish you had picked a cooler day. That sun was murder!”

I replied, “Yes but you weren’t carrying the blocks up the ladder and looking right up into the sun. There was not a cloud in the sky.”

The little house, originally a small barn Dad had built eight years before, was next door to his and Mom’s house. He and I remodeled the barn two years ago and added two small bedrooms this past spring. We needed to get the chimney finished so we could use a gas heater this coming winter instead of electric heaters. We put electric heat in the bedrooms and couldn’t afford to be an all-electric home.

Amie and I had lived there for almost two years. We had moved in just before our fifteen-month-old daughter Adrienne was born.

I said, “Thanks again,” and went inside as Dad headed for his house.

“I hope it’s finished,” Amie said, as she stirred a pot on the stove. “I don’t like you up on that steep roof.”

It was Labor Day 1958, and Amie’s mom was there for supper. Adrienne had just wakened from her afternoon nap, and was calling in her own little way, for someone to get her up.

Amie’s Mom said, “I’ll get her,” and went into the adjoining bedroom.

Our living room and kitchen were separated by a bar with three matching Cosco stools and a matching highchair.

Amie said, “Come and get it! Our favorite holiday supper: tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches.”

Amie’s mom put Adrienne in the highchair and took a seat at the end of the bar. Amie closed the kitchen door and sat on the stool closest to the highchair to help Adrienne. I was about to sit down when there came a flash of light, brighter than anything I had ever seen, and at the same time a deafening boom.

KAABOOM

Amie and her mom were knocked off their stools. Adrienne in her highchair was pushed halfway across the kitchen. She only whimpered a bit. Smoke filled the house. I had no recollection of what happened, but I do remember seeing Amie’s mom and making my way amid a lot of small pieces of drywall and helping her to the door. Amie, dazed, had recovered enough to grab Adrienne and was already outside.

I didn’t go outside, but rather grabbed a flashlight from a small table by the front door and made my way to the attic. It was so smoky I couldn’t see three feet in front of me but decided there was no fire. I got down and went outside.

When I got there, Mom, Dad and my two younger brothers, Norman age fourteen, and Ken age eight, along with Amie and her mom holding Adrienne were in the driveway between our houses.

Everyone was talking at once, trying to tell me what had happened before I got there. What I think I heard was that Mom came running out of the big house and saw Amie, Amie’s mom and Adrienne.

Not seeing me, she started screaming, “Where’s Ron, where’s Ron?”

And she started running toward the little house. Amie, still in a daze, was able to catch her and tell her, “He’s OK. I think he’s in the attic looking for a fire.”

Dad had gone inside from the chimney job and eased into the bathtub. At the sound of the KABOOM he jumped out of the tub and ran outside dripping wet and stark naked to see what had happened.

Someone, maybe Norman, ran into their house, got a towel, gave it to Dad and said, “I think you’d better cover up a bit.”

Then we saw two neighbors running up our long driveway, calling, “Is everyone all right?”

From their house they had seen what they thought was an explosion and a mushroom shaped cloud of smoke over the little house. They had immediately called the fire department.

Dad had gone back inside and put on shorts and a shirt. He and I then cautiously went to the front door of our house and peered in. What a mess! The house was still smoke-filled and pieces of drywall and dust were on everything. When we went in, we saw between two studs on the front wall nothing but bare wood on the other side of where insulation and drywall should have been. On the floor between the studs were small pieces of stripped rubber that looked as though they might have come from a wire.

Blown Out Wall

Uneaten Toasted Cheese Sandwich

Dad said, “Let’s look outside to see if there might be a clue as to what just happened.”

And there it was. Burn marks on the asphalt shingles where the telephone wire had been attached running down beside the chimney (that we had been working on ten minutes before) and into the house.

As the two neighbors started back down the driveway, we thanked them for their concern and their call to the fire department.

Now, twenty or thirty minutes after being called, the volunteer fire department arrived in the water truck and immediately started pulling out hoses and asking, “Do you have a water hook up?” “Is anyone inside?” “How do you get into the attic?” “Is anyone hurt?” “How did this happen?”

The fire chief shook his head and dispatched the five volunteers who had answered the fire call to check the house to make sure there were no problems. Then he saw the burnt shingles and burnt rubber strips on the ground. Looking closely at the shingles, he found very tiny balls of copper embedded in the burn marks. The copper wire covering had melted and was forced into the shingles by the lightning. He surmised lightning had hit the big maple tree next to the house and part of the charge had connected with our telephone line where it was attached to the tree. It then followed the phone wire into the wall. That amount of energy was enough to blow that section of wall apart.

The chief said, “You definitely had a bolt from the blue.”

He then went on about his day.

“When the alarm sounded at the fire house I was at a Labor Day cookout at my neighbors. We live about eight miles from here, and everybody was complaining about the heat and not enough shade to keep cool. They hadn’t seen a cloud all day either.”

He proceeded to explain the creation of lightning. A bolt from the blue refers to a type of cloud to ground lightning that appears to originate from a clear blue sky. It may travel horizontally for up to fifteen miles before striking something on the ground.

He explained that the lower part of a cloud is negatively charged; the upper part is positively charged. It’s the positive one that flows. The bolt of lightning occurs when there is too much charge at the top of the cloud and a discharge is needed to balance the two. The result of the charge, being positive, meant it could travel further and it is hotter.

He said, “Apparently, your maple tree had a lot of negative charge enabling it to draw the bolt to it, thereby being grounded and put out. But before being grounded a part of the charge jumped onto your telephone line, then traveled into your house stripping the insulation and melting the wire as it went.”

We thanked all of them as they gave us an all OK for the house and began rolling up hoses from the fire truck

The next day, I had to go to work. When I got home, I could see that Amie had started cleaning up the mess. It looked a lot better but still had a way to go.

“We’ll work on it tonight,” I said.

“Guess what I saw as I straightened the curtain, while cleaning in the kitchen.”

“Mmmm, one of those big ugly spiders I hate?”

“Worse than that, Ron.”

“Oooo, not much could be worse than that. I give up. What?”

“Look here,” she said.

What I saw was a drywall nail with a fragment of drywall mud attached, sticking out of the window frame. That nail flew twenty-four feet, passed between Amie and Adrienne with enough velocity and force to miss them and be driven a quarter of an inch into the window frame in the kitchen.

We said a prayer, thankful that the lightning wasn’t thirty minutes sooner and that the flying nail wasn’t off course and missed Amie and Adrienne.

To this day, nearly seventy years later, tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches eaten together have been taboo for us. Whether together or apart, to our knowledge, we have never broken the taboo.

A Bolt from the Blue

Intro to Geography