I'll relate 2 experiences I had with lightning. We go back a long way and are old acquaintances. The first was a very close call when I was about 11 years old. May have been a little younger. I have to set this up, because the devil is in the details, but in space and time..especially time. This was in the early 60s, but that isn't the time aspect that was so important. The 'house' (a large building) we lived in almost all my youth was metal roof and sides. Corrugated tin, with the rear 1/2 of the building being my father's auto shop and the front 1/2 being a 3 bedroom 1 bath living quarters. Mine and brother's bedroom was in the far rear of the living quarters, meaning I traveled thru my sister's bedroom and a long hallway to get to the bathroom. No shower, just a porcelain clad cast iron tub, a toilet and sink. Very tiny too by today's standards. Hell, fooling no one, it was small even then, with only about 10" between the outer edge of the tub and the toilet seat.. The tub had the old chain and stopper, kind of like this but not as fancy..which was connected to where the overflo opening was.
It was raining one night, which it often did there just outside Houston Tx and I had just gotten thru running the 4-5 inches of water we each was allowed for a bath, stepped over into the water, when I remembered we had overnight guests staying, (what we all referred to only as 'company') an aunt and uncle and it meant brother and I gave up our bedroom and slept on a pallet in the living room, which also meant I had to wear pajamas to bed instead of just underwear. (if you don't know what 'slept on a "pallet' means, well, you'd just have had to been there...it didn't involve any wooden objects) I turned the water off, quickly went back to my vacated bedroom and fetched my PJs and when I got back to the bathroom, the water was draining out..
I was gone no more than 60 seconds. This is the time aspect in question)
The stopper was out of it's hole and where the chain used to be, there was a long black mark, with round dots in it. The remnants of the chain was several burned beads scattered around the floor and bottom of the tub.
I fetched my mother of course and her first words were "Boy, What did you do now?!?"
Dad was summoned. He made an ugly face and quickly went outside...Sisters came in to see what I was gonna get shellacked for causing...
My uncle walked in to see what the commotion was and he explained it. Just outside that bathroom, directly behind the toilet was a 6" cast iron vent pipe that tied into the main drains and extended up to the eve. Cast iron was common drain line back then. Sometime in the brief period I got out of the tub and returned to my room and back to the bathroom, lightning had struck either the metal roof of the house or the iron vent pipe directly, traveled down and forked off the overflow into the chain and into the sitting water. I was very lucky. Had I not forgotten my pajamas, I would probably have been killed or at least seriously injured. That cast iron vent pipe went down about 4' into the ground...I know because a few years later, we had to dig all the drain lines up and replace them with new fangled PVC.
A few years later, still too young to drive but old enough to build fence, my mother had driven brother and I up to 'the place' 45 miles North to finish putting up a 4 wire cross fence across 82 acres. The corners were done, the wires stretched and line posts in. All we had left was stapling up the wires to the wooden creosoted line posts. Brother started on one end I began on the other. Mother stayed in the car reading as we had yet to build any human type structures on the place..cow's needs came first. A thunderstorm rolled in over the tall pines that surrounded the property and a deluge began. My father was not one to take no for an answer so I just kept working rain, wind and all. (an attribute and attitude that would serve me well some years later in a far off land) About the 4th post I got too after the storm began, I was thrown off the fence in mid hammer swing by a lightning strike somewhere on the fence. The crossfence was tied into the perimeter fence surrounding the 80 acres so no telling where it actually hit but was still strong enough a millisecond later when it reached a good ground...me, with one hand holding the wire in place and the other swinging a claw hammer. It dazed me only a little, I got up, searched for my hammer then went to tell my mother, expecting to find brother there. I was of course, wet to the bone, wondering if dad was going to be mad I didn't just brush this off and finish my assigned chore.. Brother was not there at the car. Mother of course was very upset, and we both went looking for my twin. Did not immediately find him, and just as mother was about to leave to go to the nearest pay phone to call the sheriff dept, the rain stopped and brother came walking up, dry as could be. He had taken off to a little hay barn we had on the other side of the property as soon as the storm showed itself, explaining I just didn't have sense to get in out of the rain.
Mother had a few words with Dad that night abut putting 'the boys' at risk and it wouldn't be the only time either. The previous episode involved a low hanging oak limb, a pickup truck and me getting thrown clean out the back of the truck at about 20 mph up in Trinity Texas. That one got me a bunch of stitches in my head after a trip to the emergency room. (on arrival back at home that evening, it was "Boy, you wait in the truck while I go talk to your mother..."
