Beat the Storm Home

Thunderstorms were simply part of growing up in Florida. Winter was usually fairly dry, but during the rest of the year, almost any day was fair game for a storm.

There were many different kinds of storms, but the passing afternoon thunderstorms were the ones we knew best. They could gather unbelievably fast. One minute, the sky looked perfectly normal. The next, dark thunderclouds were building overhead, swallowing the daylight and turning the afternoon nearly as dark as evening.

Of course, we children were rarely paying attention to the sky.

Most of the neighborhood girls gathered around an old abandoned house in the pine woods, where we played house and invented lives of our own. The boys usually played at the homemade baseball diamond right beside it. We were all close together, but completely absorbed in whatever we were doing.

By the time someone finally noticed the darkening sky, the storm might already be upon us. Thunder began rumbling. Lightning flashed through the tall trees. The wind picked up, and suddenly everyone knew it was time to run.

There was no organized evacuation and no older child calmly leading everyone to safety. It was every man for himself.

Whatever game we had been playing ended immediately. Children scattered in every direction, each of us racing toward our own house and hoping to beat the worst of the storm home.

Our house was only about two blocks away, but two blocks could feel much farther with lightning cracking overhead. Sometimes I reached the house before the rain started. Just as often, the sky opened before I made it, and I ran home through the downpour, already soaked by the time I reached the door.

No one was waiting there to greet us with towels. My mother worked hard and usually wasn’t home during the day. We let ourselves inside and took care of ourselves. If we were wet, we dried off and changed our clothes.

We also knew the rules for surviving a thunderstorm. Stay away from the windows. Move toward the middle of the room. Don’t turn on the television because lightning could strike and destroy it. We would gather safely inside and wait for the storm to pass.

Most of those afternoon storms were as brief as they were powerful. They arrived with darkness, wind, thunder, lightning, and pounding rain—and then moved on. Occasionally, a storm settled over the neighborhood and stayed long enough to cause flooding, but that was rare.

Usually, the clouds moved away, the rain slowed, and daylight returned.

And what did we do then?

We went straight back outside.

The girls returned to the abandoned house. The boys went back to the baseball diamond. Whatever game the storm had interrupted simply continued