Lightning

I’ve always wanted to see a real tornado, but never got the chance to see the actual funnel cloud I’ve only seen in pictures. So the possible opportunity to witness a tornado during one of the violent storms we often encountered on the trips excited me. The failure to see a tornado touch down was always a disappointment I carry to this day. The closest I ever got was in Guymon, Oklahoma. The clouds were black and the storm sirens were heard everywhere. We had checked in to a Holiday Inn and we were told to stay indoors for the time being. Well, the sky got darker and the wind picked up. We were watching the event from a lobby door with access to the pool, the wind was making tiny tidal waves in the pool and would actually splash over the sides. In front of us was a flag pole flying the American flag, the wind picked up and I saw no tornadoes, but the flag was flapping violently, so much that within less than a minute the entire flag had literally dissolved away from the force of the wind right before my eyes. As soon as it had come, the storm ended. The storm warnings continued through the night as well as the constant lightning that visibly struck every 5 or 10 minutes. In the 2nd floor room of the Holiday Inn I slept on the floor next to the window so I could fall asleep watching the lightning flash in the distance throughout the night.

The year my friend Ted came with us on the trip (more about that later), as well as my sisters Trisha and Katrina, and the surprising involvement of my Mom on the trip again that year. Mom had disavowed the trip years before, but I found out later that she felt compelled to go and keep a protective eye on Ted. The trip for her that year was miserable and she quite understandably drank her way across the country to keep from going insane - needless to say things were tense at times. By the time we got to Guymon, Oklahoma (the same place where we had the flag-ripping tornado a few years before) we had caught up with a spectacular storm that gave us a beautiful but frightening light show one evening. As a challenge my dad and us kids were determined to get a picture of lightning on the Polaroid, which was a test of patience not only from the weather cooperating, but the obsessive insistence that we all participate long after the thrill of the challenge had gone from us kids. Again my mom had nothing to do with this potential fiasco. We started out setting up the cameras out in a field next to the Motel, which became obviously dangerous when the storm approached toward us and lightning seemed to strike in a taunting manner mere yards away. Mom, almost hysterical at the lack of good judgment, screamed for us to return to the safety of the motel enclosure. Dad stubbornly refused to admit any danger but complied with the demand. From that new vantage point we spent what seemed like hours waiting for an appropriate burst of lightning worthy of wasting a chance at printing an instant photo. Given the primitive equipment capabilities (even for that time) we determined, with my dad that in order to get a picture of lightning one had to anticipate the flash. That meant waiting with full attention for the occasional but rare multiple and lingering bolts that only happened when you least expected. The whole event became extremely frustrating, except for dad who seemed to enjoy the irritation in us kids and cultivated the frustration further by suggesting irrational demands and punishment for wasting film on a failed try. The weather itself seemed to enjoy teasing us as well by providing sporadic bursts of activity when we were least prepared and suddenly relinquishing activity as soon as we were ready, Dad somehow had the ability to make us feel responsible for the lack of cooperation in the weather and responded with an ultimatum that we wouldn’t sleep until an image of lightning appeared on Polaroid film. Finally! We got one. And thankfully it was a group effort, if one could imagine that a group of kids with a 1940’s Polaroid camera could help matters, a blurry ambiguous blob of light appears on a black & white photo. We could all go to bed now.

The picture still exists and is proudly deemed the only picture of lightening my dad has been able to get.