Thunder

 

Carolyn J. Rose

A long rumble of thunder woke me shortly before dawn. Close. And low.

 

Rain hit the roof. A spatter. A splatter. A deluge. Then, a splatter once again. 

I listened for a time, remembering thunderstorms in the Catskill Mountains where I grew up. Cracks and booms and echoes bouncing off mountainsides. Overlapping. Crashing back on themselves.

 Streaks of lightning. Sheets of rain. Dirt roads awash. The brook below the house running high. The stream in the narrow valley between ridges a rusty red with clay washed from its banks.

 The sound of thunder there and then always evoked images of Rip Van Winkle. And images of the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew, bowling somewhere out of my sight behind the clouds.

 As a child I would speculate about how large their bowling balls and pins would have to be to produce such impressive sounds. I may have asked the adults in my world about that. I may have gotten some kind of answers. I may even have thought the answers had merit because I believed in ghosts. Or at least the possibility of ghosts. 

I still do.

So as this morning's spatters ceased and the storm rolled away, I wondered if those ghosts regularly left the Catskills to bowl among other mountains. I wondered who reset the pins and who kept the score sheet and whether, like the rest of us, ghosts were required to wear special shoes.

 

But before I got to wondering about monogrammed bowling balls and bags, I fell asleep once more.

There's no business like . . .

 

It’s a little-known fact (so little known, it’s impossible to confirm or deny) that your humble blogger was the winner of the 1957 Bandon, Oregon, Cranberry Festival Talent Show. This was the precursor to the off-key marching band procession through all four blocks of downtown Bandon and the accompanying majorette-tripping free-for-all and cranberry fling-a-thon.                   

Being 9 years old, tubby and a born smartass, I’d selected “I’m a Little Teapot, Short and Stout” as my crowd-pleasing musical selection. Later, the other entrants claimed I had an unfair visual advantage being both diminutive and tubby, i.e. short and stout. But others, not so sour grapedly, admitted my arm motions accompanying “This is my handle, this is my spout” were things of beauty.

I won a $25 dollar savings bond, which I wisely cashed in for its face value of $14.37, and invested in a stack of “Captain Splurgo” comic books and a five-pound bag of Choco-Yummies. (Later banned by the FDA). Mmmmm, Choco-Yummies.

It’s a fact, America (and the world) does love talent competitions. There’s one streaming on TV somewhere as I speak. Uh, type. I recently stumbled across a news article about a live show held by our neighbors to the north, Walla Walla, Washington. You know, Walla, Walla, the city so nice they named it twice?

Cleverly, the amateur performance extravaganza was titled “The Walla Walla’s Got Got, Talent Talent Show Show. Clever Clever, no? No. I was stunned and/or amazed by the width, height and circumference of the acts that took the stage.

·      The Heliumaire’s: Apparently, this was a barbershop quartet who trilled helium-aided falsetto 4-part harmony of old-timey favorites.  Mid-medley they inflated long-nozzled balloons and twisted and tied helium critters for the kids. Apparently the crowd favorite was “Sweet Adeline” segueing into a balloon Labra-doodle licking himself.

·      Bucky, the tap-dancing beaver. A nature lover in full furry regalia, including enormous plastic teeth and repurposed spatula tail tripped (Literally. You try doing a time step in a Beaver suit) the light fantastic to the tune of “Up a Lazy River.” No word where he found size 28 tap shoes.

·      The Coagulators: A surly leather-clad all-girl group that snarled their way through a medley of songs from the Rolling Stones “Let it Bleed” album.

Other performers included “Marvin and his roller-skating Corgi,” “Lucious Lola” who pole danced while reciting a sonnet comprised of Donald Trumps’ lies and broken campaign promises, and the Varicoastal’s, an eighty and older chorus line who showed off their pulsing veins while low-kicking across the stage to the tune of “Funkytown.”

And the winner of the first and only Walla Walla’s got got talent talent show show? Ventriloquist Vinnie Vroom and his mumbling sidekick, Larry the lounge lizard. Which, apparently was a gecko hand puppet decked out in a custom tux. 

I wonder where Vinnie spent his $14.37. Maybe someone, somewhere has a hoard of mummified Choco-Yummies they’ll sell him.