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My mother did not play with Mother Nature. She raised her children to be the same way.
She had a lot of respect for thunderstorms. So do I, now.
Thunderstorms, when I was a young boy growing up on the bustling East Side of Niagara Falls, were often fierce. As the seasons changed, the cold Canadian air would rush in on top of the thick humid heat from the south, and BAM.
Thunderstorms!
I loved it. The violently contorting trees and wildly twisting stop signs, together with the whistling shriek of the wind as it whipped through the high-tension power lines, added a sound track to the Dali-like images of shiny, backyard aluminum furniture skipping and dancing down the street. It all combined to set the stage for one of Mother Nature's most amazing performances -- thunderstorms, a show I never wanted to miss.
Silver-lined, purple and black mountain-like clouds would suddenly replace the ordinarily blue-and-gray-striped sky, dripping ominously close to the ground like wicked tongues. The distant low rumble, which seemed to be coming from the ground right under our feet, was inching closer and growing louder, as the sharp white flashes leapt from cloud to cloud and then to the ground.
The hot summer air that made the fine street dust and grime cling to our sweaty faces was quickly replaced by a frigid wind that made us shiver with excitement and fear.
We sensed that the storm was getting closer and that we had to drop the baseball in the middle of the game, turn our bicycles around and head in the other direction, back to our own neighborhoods, away from the danger, toward the faint, desperate cries of our mothers, who stood on the edges of the porches, leaning into the wind, calling us home.
Our hearts pounding in our chests, we'd make our way, racing on foot or in our red wagons and makeshift motorless go-karts, powered only by the hard, fast pushing of our closet friends.
From street to street, block by block, the steady rumble of kids running home from every direction rose up louder than the encroaching thunder, until the bright flash of a lightning strike just feet away sent us silently forward, propelled by the fear that locked in our throats as we ran and peddled madly to our own houses.
No matter where we were in the neighborhood, we all knew that we had to make it HOME.
Our sisters were in a frantic dance too, snatching and tugging the sheets and pillowcases from the jaws of the spring-loaded wooden clothespins, off the backyard clotheslines and into the balsa-wood baskets.
Once in the house, another set of rules and duties applied. We all had specific prearranged chores that we learned over time were our sole responsibilities. So we charged ahead, each to our own station. Mine was the upstairs windows.
Our two-story frame house, the last one on Mackenna Avenue near the corner of 27th Street, stood proudly wrapped in bright yellow and light gray aluminum siding. Pitted by the infrequent hail and acid rain, it had windows on every side -- nine in all upstairs. My job was to make sure that they were all closed before the rain came in.
Along with the aluminum siding facelift, my parents had added combination aluminum storm windows and screens to replace the old lead-weighted, wood-framed, putty-lined windows. Every year, before they had the new windows installed, I used to help my father by standing at the foot of the ladder and handing up to him the 30-pound wood-framed storm windows, a task I can honestly say I hated with a passion.
I had to hold the base of the ladder steady and then pass up to him each heavy window, and he would attach them to the house with big butterfly nuts and screws. My greatest fear was that he would drop the window on me, or that he would fall off the ladder. That never happened, probably because I was constantly saying the rosary all the while we were performing this annual ritual.
One year, when he decided I had grown strong enough to do it, he traded places with me. It was my turn to climb halfway up the ladder, then turn around and reach down to him as he handed the windows up to me.
I was so afraid of heights I could not do it. I was scared to death to turn around, LET GO with one hand and grab the window with the other. I just froze there until he talked me down and I resumed my earlier position on the ground, handing the windows up to him. That must have been the year he decided to have the new aluminum windows installed.
We did not have central air conditioning in that house and we probably did not need it, with windows on every side on both floors and plenty of oscillating fans. But the task of closing them all in the face of an oncoming thunderstorm was daunting indeed. The cold Canadian air blew hard against the surface of the two-story house, so hard that it sometimes knocked over some things in the rooms, including the curtains and Venetian blinds my mother kept at every window.
Once I got them all closed and ran back downstairs, Mom would send us around to each room to unplug EVERYTHING.
She believed that no electrical appliances, not even the telephone, should be used while there was a thunderstorm going on. That meant we had to find and unplug every single electrical appliance in the house.
With the house dark and quiet, we were then marched silently downstairs into the basement. Dad had converted it into a combination recreation and utility room, complete with washer and dryer, a pool table, sofas, televisions, stereos and cozy furniture.
But when we were in the basement during a thunderstorm, there was no recreation allowed. We had to sit in silence and "listen to God's work," Mom would say. She'd sometimes lead us in prayer when the lightning struck too close and the thunder shook the house.
When it was over, the rumble just a distant, faint muffle, we would get busy opening up and plugging in the house again. Stepping outside into the now fresh-smelling air, washed clean of the factory grit, I could see our neighbors peeping out too. As the sun came back out, we'd get on our bikes and resume our baseball games like nothing had ever happened, a fallen limb or a misplaced lawn chair the only evidence of the storm.
This was no laughing matter to my mom. To her, thunderstorms were very solemn events, not something to fear, she taught us, but it was "God's work, something you should always respect."
Turns out she was right. Even the Weather Channel, now one of my favorite pastimes, advises us to stay away from the windows and not to use electrical appliances, including telephones, during a thunderstorm.
But what I will always remember when I sense a storm coming is the lesson that I learned from Mom -- the lesson of respect for Mother Nature, and that every storm will pass.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 20 2002 |