Happy Good Friday to you all.
On a personal note, I can’t go through a Good Friday without thinking of one of the most terrifying moments of my childhood. It happened after our family had gone to bed that evening after a wonderful spring Good Friday day. Early in the history of this blog, I referenced this in a post about Fire Prevention Month. My sister, Lisa, wrote about it in her blog yesterday.
This is one of those childhood stories that sticks with you. In fact, it’ll come up in family discussions every now and then. Ed even remembers it and he lived in the next neighborhood over. This is such a profound memory from childhood that I can’t believe I haven’t written about it before but I just went back through the archives and didn’t see a reference. If I missed it, please forgive.
Here goes.
We went to bed late that Friday evening and we had all settled into a deep sleep when, out of no where, came the loudest BOOM!!!! you can imagine. We’re not talking about a lightning strike. We’re talking about something that shook every house in the neighborhood down to the foundation.
Immediately, all four of us were up and asking each other “What was that?” “What did you hear?” “What did you remember just before you heard the sound?”
It was now just after 4 a.m.
My parents’ bedroom was on the back corner of the house and near the back window was my dad’s ham radio tower. It was grounded against potential lightning strikes. Still, he thinks he heard a sort of sizzling sound just before the boom.
We chatted for just a few more minutes and all prepared to go back to bed to sleep the rest of the night. My mother had a habit of looking out the window occasionally and she went to my bedroom and looked out the front corner window.
There, she noticed a number of our neighbors out in the street. They, too, had heard the sonic boom.
Just beyond where many of the neighbors had gathered in the street she saw a large orange glow which illuminated the night sky. Just two streets over, a house was fully engulfed in flames. As you might understand, sleep on this night was now a remote possibility.
Some family member headed outside – I’m not sure, now, if it was my mother went or my dad – and gathered some basic details from the neighbors. They, too, had heard the boom and soon after that realized that the house - which would have been located behind the house behind the house which was across the street from the house across the street from us – was on fire.
Over the course of the next hour or so, firefighters got the blaze under control. By dawn, the fire was out and only smoldering ruins remained. As a little shaver, I was both fascinated and terrified of the sight. And, in fact, over the next few nights, I didn’t sleep very well. Eventually, life returned to normal and the immediate fear faded.
In the days and weeks to come, there were some facts that were revealed and a great deal of speculation:
One theory was that the water heater exploded at this house but a more prominent theory was there was a superbolt of lightning that struck the chimney of this house. That would certainly jibe with my dad’s memory of the sizzling sound. Perhaps part of the bolt traveled down the radio tower into the ground?
Where that happened or not, the superbolt theory seems plausible. It had been raining on and off that evening and into the overnight hours (though it was not a stormy night in general).
The family had two boys who were roughly my age. It was spring break week and school was out. We learned the boys had stayed up late and fell asleep in the family room watching tv. They were awakened by the blast and alerted their parents so they could all safely escape before the fire fully engulfed the structure.
They didn’t remain in the neighborhood long, though. I think they rented a house one street over for a short period but they were not around for the rebuilding of the house. I guess it was just too spooky. Who could blame them?
For months after the fire, there was buckled pavement in front of their house which served as some reminder of the violent lightning strike from that springtime storm.
The pavement has long since been resurfaced as you can see in this photo my sister took. The house that stands at that location looks fine. If you didn’t know there was a fire there decades ago, you wouldn’t know. Probably only a few long-term residents of the subdivision would even remember.
But we remember. I remember the event every year on Good Friday.
It’s one of those things that just sticks with you.
JG
No comments:
Post a Comment