DATE: Monday, August 18, 1997               TAG: 9708180055
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COLUMN 

SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

THUNDERSTORMS HAVE LOST THEIR BANG

Francois Villon, the celebrated 15th century French scapegrace versifier, is remembered today principally for his enigmatic poetical query: ``But where are the snows of yesteryear?'' Well, today I'd like to paraphrase Villon's tag line by launching my column with an equally cryptic question.

Where are the thunderstorms that once climaxed almost every hot and humid Tidewater summer afternoon, affording grateful relief when air conditioning was still regarded as a crazy inventor's pipe dream?

If my memory is correct, I recall that almost every summer afternoon during my childhood was punctuated with blinding flashes of lightning followed by aerial cannonades of thunder. Now, even though the weather pundits repeatedly predict thunderstorms and gigantic cloud bastions to assault the heavens, the squalls they foretell are usually spent before their threats wind up as brief and unsatisfactory cloudbursts.

Gone are the days, it seems, when an almost daily thunderstorm provided a much needed physical, as well as spiritual, catharsis for many people. Now, even when an occasional storm unleashes its fury over the area, it is largely ignored except for those who are unfortunate enough to be temporarily tied up in the traffic jams.

When I was growing up, however, things were different. And the first distant rumbles from menacing clouds immediately triggered a ritual that had been observed by Norfolk-area people for generations.

Accompanying the clouds that soon blotted out the sun and silenced any birds that were still comfortable enough to twitter, were sudden gusts, sending dust and litter in all directions. At that point our listless play was always interrupted by our mothers' strident injunctions to head for home at once, accompanied by the banging down of windows and the hasty closing of outside blinds.

Once we were safely inside, we were repeatedly admonished not to touch any metal object, to keep out of drafts, and not to answer the telephone if it rang while the storm was raging. So warned, we cowered in rooms darkened by pulled-down shades until the overhead fury finally spent itself in distant mutterings.

Even though I always covered my eyes with tightly clasped fingers to block out the sharp flashes of lightning that penetrated our closely shuttered windows, and tried to derive some comfort from knowing that our house was equipped with lightning rods, the intermittent ice-blue flashes and heavy accompanying thunder always gave me a serious case of the goose bumps. Meanwhile, my mother would try to relieve my anxieties by telling me that God's voice could be heard amidst the thunder. Unfortunately, I had already developed a premature cynical streak, so her assurances didn't hold out too much comfort.

That was the home front thunderstorm picture 80 or so years ago as I remember it. But there was one occasion on which I came in for a much more terrifying experience. When that particular storm broke, I was too far from home to seek shelter there, so I ducked into a friend's house to escape the tempest.

The same preparations as far as darkening the household had been taken, but something else of a considerably awesome nature had been added. Seated in the parlor beside a lighted kerosene lamp was my friend's black-suited great-grandfather, a venerable old coot with shaggy white hair and a long tobacco-stained beard. Spread open on his lap was a large, leather-bound Bible. And when lightning and thunder really got going, he read us a hair-raising description of the predicted end of the world from the Book of Revelations.

By the time that old fellow got through scaring the hell out of all of us with the account of the angel coming down from heaven holding the keys to the bottomless pit, and the blasts of the last trumpets of doom, I was ready to be a good boy for a long time, or at least until the thunderstorm had spent itself.

Fortunately, my suddenly acquired piety didn't last long enough for me to later learn of the following thunderstorm yarn that involved two Norfolk-area clergymen.

Once when the Rt. Rev. William Ambrose Brown, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia from 1938 to 1950, and another clergyman were driving to Williamsburg they ran into a particularly vicious storm during which lightning struck a wire fence along the road and a ball of fire danced along the barrier toward the car, barely missing it.

``I waited for the bishop to offer some appropriate words of thanksgiving,'' the other clergyman said afterward. But the good bishop did not rise to the occasion. Wiping his brow, he boomed, ``Well! That was too close for comfort!''

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu