While driving back to the farm the other night, I could see in the distant sky “heat lightning” flashing across the heavens in all shades of oranges and yellows that made the warm humid night somewhat special. I was listening to WSM-AM radio and when the skies would give a glow of color, I would hear the crackle of static coming across the air waves in the night blending in with the songs of the Saturday night Opry coming from the Ryman in Nashville. With each soft flash in the night’s darkness across my windshield, my thoughts returned back to the days of my youth during summer nights when heat lightning events would occur as I would wash up on the back porch of our farm house from a day of just being a farm boy during the 50s and 60s.
Heat lightning is light from a distant thunderstorm and can be as much as 100 miles away reflecting off a layer of haze and flashing up into the night sky. Since the sound of thunder rarely travels more than 10 miles, there is no sound from the storm, only the flash of light from the lightning is observed. Heat really has nothing to do with what you are seeing other than you see these flashes during warm nights, so the term heat lightning is a misnomer for the faint flashes of lightning, but the term does add a bit of summer lore that makes their viewing more enjoyable.
I grew up in a white frame four-room farmhouse with outdoor plumbing. The only running water we had was if you ran from the well with the bucket, but that was only if you were willing to go back and get another bucket to replace what you lost while running. Each day there were two buckets of water brought from the well to the screened in back porch both morning and night when we went to do the milking. They were used for household chores as well as taking care of your personal hygiene. There were extra trips made to the well during the day to supplement those mandatory buckets and being the youngest, I got that job many times. I didn’t mind it that much either, because it also allowed me to be the one to get the first drink from the white enamel dipper with the red rim. There is nothing as cool and refreshing as a freshly drawn bucket of water that you drew yourself and carried to the house. Sure beats today’s plastics bottles that you carried all the w ay from the grocery store.
After a hard day of working in the field, maybe hauling hay, or just being a kid and playing in the woods, I can remember coming in on our back porch and pouring a pan of water to wash off some of the day’s grime. There was usually a “string of grandma beads” under your neck and the usual scrubbing behind the ears was required. After taking care of the face and upper area I would put the pan of water down on the floor and place my feet into the cool water. It felt so good to feet that had spent the day in brogans covering almost every acre of our rocky farm. I would take my toes and move the bar of Ivory soap around from side to side of the old wash pan and stare into the nighttime distance as lighting bugs would flash their signals to each other as if giving greetings of hello.
After taking my feet from the now pretty dirty water, I would dry them on flour sack towels that had come with our flour purchases at the grocery store in town. They were green and orange with a little bit of gold thread interwoven that would become stiff after several washings, but seemed pretty special hanging on the rack out on the porch. On some nights I was treated to a free fireworks show from heat lightning in the distance and often wondered if those storms would make their way to our farm during the night for me to hear the symphonic sounds of the rain fall on our tin roof as I slept. The glow in the distance was even calming in a way and just added to my summers, especially, my nights of washing up on the back porch.
As I pulled into my garage and closed the door, shutting the heat lightning out the other night, I wondered once again, “Will the rain get here tonight and play a tune upon my roof?” It didn’t matter. I had already been privileged to a wonderful trip back down on the farm during another show of heat lightning on a warm and humid night in the country.