Great thunderstorm last night starting around 11 pm. I especially enjoy thunderstorms, in spite of having been too close to them at times.
When I was a little kid, I lived in a small town in Colorado about half-way between Denver and Boulder. It was about a mile square and although you could see the mountains to the west, it was still enough out on the plains to be fairly flat. Today the town of Broomfield is it's own county, and there is development practically from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins and beyond, but when I lived there, there was nothing - most of the town hadn't been built yet.
The summer between my 7th and 8th years was a dry, windy summer as I recall. Knowing that the next day was supposed to have high wind, my little brother (P) and I rigged up a bedspread as a parachute. We were already good at parachutes because we used to climb up on the garage roof and jump, fully expecting to float slowly down. Never happened, of course. We hit the ground pretty hard, but we sure thought we knew about parachutes.
So on the morning of the storm, we were ready with a wagon, a bicycle, and a parachute. The wind came as it was supposed to and it was a good wind - 40-50 mph. I tried first with the bicycle. I could almost catch a breeze, but with the parachute tied to the handlebar stem, it just wouldn't get enough air. So we tied it to the handle of the wagon. P got in the back, since I was the big brother and got to steer. I stood with the rope to the parachute and the wagon handle between my legs and held the chute open to catch the air. And it did!
We got about halfway up Kalmia, heading towards the Kohl Cottage School before mom came tearing out of the house chasing us yelling at us to jump out of the wagon. Jump out?!! Both of us had been skinned enough on gravel to know that that would hurt a lot and besides, the chute was working. Why jump out?
We found out why the hard way. Can't steer. Can't stop until the wind dies down or you hit a curb. Guess which.
With the luck of the stupid, neither of us got hurt, which was good because Mom was in no condition to help us. She was laughing too hard to stop.
Now the thing that strikes me today is that Mom knew we were going to try this little stunt, and was watching the whole thing from the window. She didn't expect it to work, (maybe knowing more about sails than we did) but just let it happen. then when it did happen, she thought it was just as much fun as we did.
So this is nothing about thunder and lightening and all about being a stupid kid, and being the kind of parent that lets their kid sail away.
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Although it was quite a nice day weather-wise, I can't get the thunder and lightening theme out of my head.
When I was 16, I lived in a small town in Illinois that, of course, went on to become a sprawing suburb. I guess you could say that we were early adopters of small towns that would later grow into reasonable-sized sprawling rows of housed on the hillside all made out of ticky-tacky. (With apologies to Malvina Reynolds.)
That summer when the carnival came to town, a group of us were recruited to work setting up the rides. The crew was kind of fascinating to us, and the promise of quick money and free rides was enough incentive.
We worked all day to set up the rides - Ferris Wheel, Tilt-A-Whirl, Roller Coaster; all the standard carnival rides. One thing to understand about the rides, is that they are designed for quick assembly and knock-down. There are a lot of cotter pins and bailing wire that go into putting those rides up fast.
What happens, naturally, is that as late afternoon approaches, the sky starts to darken and then gets that yellowish tinge that says there's gonna be a hell of a storm. Ever more furiously the rides are assembled becaues the fair opens at 6:00 and the sky is not looking too friendly.
The storm starts with a drop or two of rain, and then the sky just opens up, howling wind and lightening snaking across the sky and then just a wall of water. Everybody runs for nearest cover, which for us is across the parking lot to the Ben Franklin store. As my friend and I ran, one of the seats of the Ferris Wheel goes flying past my head, missing me by a footstep. We just kept running. We started laughing in that maniacal way that you do when you realize you've cheated ceratin injury or death.
Well, that was enough carnival for me. I knew then and there, I would never ride another ride, nor could I let anybody I had the least bit of feeling for ever ride those pieces of tin and wire.
So I went to get paid. The man in charge refused to pay. He knew we were under-age, he knew it when he hired us, and he knew he could get away with it. As I was about to do something extremely stupid, the friend of the older sister of the girl I was kind of seeing came up and pulled me away from the fairground.
We got into her car and drove around for a bit, and then went to hear some music at a coffeehouse. At the coffehouse, we scored a couple of illegal smiles and a bottle of wine and drove her red mustang on the dirt farm roads that criss-crossed the area and then sat by the river and necked for an hour or so.
By the time she drove me home, I had put all thoughts of revenge out of mind. She, the thunder and the lightening, had done me a very good turn.
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