I was sitting here just a few minutes ago and I heard the sound of thunder off in the distance. I immediately thought of what must be going through the minds of the many victims of the recent tornadoes. This thunder and lightning has got to bring back those terrible memories. I wonder if I had lived through that, would I be able to continue to live in Alabama with all our thunderstorm activity? As I sat here thinking about all that, my mind drifted to thoughts of when I was young. Back then we did not have the instantaneous communications we are accustomed to today. There were no warning sirens. No one talked of EF-4 , EF-5 , wall clouds or hook echos. Back then when it became evident that a thunderstorm was approaching, some one would say, it's coming up a cloud. That was it. No one know exactly what to expect until it had passed.
I had some relatives that were terrified when it came up a cloud. My paternal grandmother, who it was said was once struck by lightning, was one of them. I never was at their house when it came up a cloud, but I have heard my dad and my aunt Annie Julia talked about how scared she was of "clouds." Now a days, when the weather gets bad, the guy on the TV says to go to your safe place. Back then some folks had storm shelters which I think might have started life as root cellars and ended up mostly being used in bad storms. Although my mother often talked about wanting a storm shelter, we never did have one. When it would come up a bad thunderstorm with lots of lightning, we were told to go get on the bed. I don't know what the hell getting on a bed was supposed to do. Maybe, since the frames were metal folks thought the lightning ,if it struck, would run to ground through the frame and spare the occupants. Having seen what a direct lightning strike does to an oak tree I don't think being on a steel bed would help much. But that was our safe place.
I remember one time when my sister and I were quite young and were at home with mama, a particularly bad storm came up. There were a lot of direct cloud to ground lightning strikes near the house accompanied by deafening thunder claps. We had a little black fiest dog that stayed in the yard but she was as terrified of lightning as my grandmother was. When a cloud came up, the little dog would find a way to get into the house. We were all in the living room and at one point my mother told us to go get on the bed. The little dog took off running and beat us into the bedroom. When we got there, she was in the middle of the bed looking back at us. Keep in mind, this was an outside dog. She was virtually never allowed inside. How she knew what a bed was, I don't know, but it sure looked like she understood what my mother said and reacted immediately.
I am truly thankful that my worst memories of thunderstorms involve having to jump up in the middle of a bed with a little dog and not what so many of our neighbors have recently endured.
