Summer Thunder Storms in Manor Ridge

It's already looking like another long hot humid Manor Ridge summer here in the old neighborhood. The other night I saw my friend Jim (unless otherwise specified all of my friends mentioned here are from the old neighborhood) and he asked me what the recent weather reminded me of. He asked me this on June 16th, a Wednesday, after we had just come through several days of almost constant thunder storms and rain showers in the 5PM - 7PM time period. My answer, of course, was "it reminds me of summers when we were kids". "Correct! - Jim exclaimed.

You all remember those hot, humid summer days of the 60's and 70's, right?

Summer vacation had just started! The first week or so was OK, not too hot and sticky, and then came the lightning bugs. And with them came the heat and humidity.

We could start a typical Manor Ridge summer day anywhere, but let's start with bedtime. If you were not yet old enough to stay up real late like your older brothers and sisters, - it was off to bed by 11:00 PM, maybe midnight at the latest. Yes it was summer vacation but there were still rules to follow - rules like what time you had to be in the sack. During the school year of course you had to be in bed by 9:00 PM but this was summer so you got another two, maybe three hours tacked on. This allowed you to watch those never seen 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM dramas, police, and doctor shows you never saw during the school year. Of course, it being summer, they were in repeats. But since you never saw any of the episodes, they were all still new to you. You soon realized why these TV shows were on at 10:00 PM, they were meant for adults. You grew bored with them and stopped watching (except Love American Style - now there was a great late night summer show!).

For some unknown reason - your parents still insisted on you wearing pajamas to bed. In the winter they were fine - no - they were essential! You would freeze without a nice warm set of pajamas! But in the summer? Even the light fabric, short sleeves and shorts were too much in the Lancaster County summer sauna. But still, rules were rules, and you wore them to bed anyway.

You woke up after a night of trying to sleep in an upstairs bedroom with no air-conditioning (no one had AC back then, at least no one we knew). If you were lucky you had the air-conditioning of the day - a window fan. But all this did was suck the humid and hot air into the already hot and saturated room. It also rattled and vibrated and made noise all night long - noise you came to know all too well as you tossed and turned in bed, trying in vain to get to sleep.

You went downstairs to start your day with breakfast. Stepping outside to get the milk bottle out of the milk cooler you noticed the day was already hot and sticky and you knew it would only get worse. The cicadas would be shrieking their high-pitched noise as you looked across the street to try to see where the noisy rascals were coming from. But you couldn't see too far because there was so much humidity in the air it was like looking through a cloud. The early morning sun was rising over Achey's Farm to the east - ready to bake another day.

You spent the morning playing outside - if you were lucky you got to go to Maple Grove pool for the day. But by afternoon the heat and humidity were brutal. You stayed outside anyway, what else was there to do? But you might have curtailed some of your more strenuous activities by afternoon.

Then, invariably, sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 PM, the clouds would roll in and there would be thunder heard in the distance. Soon there would be the unmistakable odor of the approaching thunderstorm - that chemical-like smell just before the wind picked up and the storm hit. I read for years that this was ozone in the air created by the lightning. But later I learned it was really the odor of dust rising off the ground. What ever the science behind this odor, an odor that will always take you back to your childhood when you smell it - it was far more mysterious and magical when we had no idea what caused it.

Then the rains and wind would come. The Manor Ridge trees, which were still young at that time but always seemed to be gigantic Sequoia-like spires to me, would start to thrash back and forth. The rain came heavy, in "sheets" as they said. My mom would always be running out into the backyard with her laundry basket - trying to get her sheets off the cloths line before the rain soaked them. All other Manor Ridge mothers were doing the same - rushing from their houses, interrupting The Guiding Light or The Mike Douglas Show, to save their clean laundry which only moments before was baking, as you were, in the summer sun.

This was one of the many great things about late afternoon summer thunder storms in Manor Ridge. They broke the tedium and routine of our typical summer afternoons. What other great force of Nature could make Manor Ridge mothers run outside all at once!

The storms also brought welcome relief, temporary though it was, to the unending heat. The temperature would plunge and with the wind and rain it felt so cool, so refreshing. Almost like a bottle of Sprite from the Wagners cooler.

Personally I loved these storms and the lightning was the best part. I would sit outside underneath our aluminum and fiberglass car port, sheltered from the rain, but sill able to see the lighting bolts and hear the thunder up close. Of course this made for an attractive target for the lightning, but I never thought anything of the danger. Far from it - the danger is what made it fun.

The car port had an aluminum framework which filled with water and anywhere there was an open hole where a rivet was missing, out would shoot a thin stream of water - like a fountain. The fiberglass roof made the rain a cacophony. No wonder I can't hear.

I loved to watch the trees bend in the wind and the streets flood. The ally behind our house which separated all houses with their backyards between Hawthorne Drive and Millersville Road, swelled with water if it was a heavy downpour. This was the greatest because then we could run and slide in the rain-covered grass. For a few short minutes it was like having our own rain water pool. We called it "Lake Hawthorne".

Your dad might pull up in the family car, just getting home from work. As our car port was never used for the car, my dad would get wet running from the street to the house. But he loved thunder storms as much as I did, so he didn't mind. As a matter of fact, he loved storms so much he encouraged us kids to go outside and watch.

And if you were really lucky, the storm brought hail! Hail was the rarest of rare summer storm events, or at least it seemed to me. One time we got so much hail my mom made us gather up some and we put it in a dish we kept it in the freezer to show people. This was high entertainment back in the 60's and 70's. I think we had that well preserved hail in our freezer for a year.

But all too soon, the rains and winds would die down and the afternoon summer thunder storm was over. You could almost set your watch to it.

Then the sun would come out again - this time creating a steam bath - you could see steam rising from the streets as the water cycle you had just learned about in fourth grade repeated itself.

And just like rain going back up into the clouds as water vapor - prodded along by the heat of the sun, as twilight set in, the lightning bugs would come out, and the beautiful cycle of life in summertime Manor Ridge would start over again.

Here's a short video I took of our recent hail storm. You can hear the fire and police sirens wailing in the background - it was quite a storm. As you can see, I still sit outside during Manor Ridge summer thunderstorms. I always will.