We tied Christmas ornaments to brooms with butcher’s twine and dangled them out windows. We couldn’t have said why it was funny, but we were certain it was.
I skipped with the other kids, singing, “Lightning man, lightning man, where’s your rod?” We tapped coastguardsmen on the shoulder to whisper the question and ran shrieking.
We’re calling you.”Īfter, in the giddy, permissive days following any storm, I used bungee cords for jump ropes. We listened to shingles pull away from the roof, to the trees outside popping like cans, to the Keasey family next door singing “Hosanna,” crammed into their tub same as us. She clasped her hands in front of the standing fan, and she said, “Hear us, lightning man.” We climbed into the bathtub, put the mattress there on top and hunched against it for breathing room. When a storm tracked off the Gulf to New Orleans, she didn’t call on Jesus. When the generator at the corner of Lee and Empire blew, when the neighbor girl dropped her hair dryer into the kitchen sink and the surge protectors tripped one after another down the row of flats, my mother said, “Where’s that lightning man?” My mother invoked you when the weather turned, when hard rain shorted our window units, when jellyfish sucked up into Gulf Power’s turbines fried the circuitry and we lived for days in the dark. The Louisiana Electrical Review, January 30, 1909 I’ve come to meet you, lightning man.Īs this is the lightning-rod season, it is the opportune time to put the homeowner on his guard against the wiles of one lightning-rod man, who is now going his rounds in the lower wards equipped with a “reel” of twisted white “ribbon,” some alleged insulators, a few gilded points and spikes, and an enormous quantity of impudent loquacity. “There’s no one up there for you,” she said, hanging up.īut I haven’t come looking for family. This morning, I told my mother I was taking a ferry to Ellis Island. I came up on the train, two days spent on the rails you once rode the other way. The tourists mistake me for a living exhibit, a reenactor. I’m wearing a homburg with a stiff brim and a suit just like yours. There is still one camera on Ellis Island, and I’m sitting in front of it. But the site where you had your photograph taken on Ellis Island is open to tourists, marked by a photo booth. The room where you argued your case before the Board of Special Inquiry is locked, visible only through glass windows. The medical ward where you spent most of your time on the island is closed to visitors now. I’m on the first floor, near the water fountains, past the ladies’. I have something to tell you.Īfter you disembark, follow signs to the gift shop. We’ll miss each other by a century, I know. Your ship docks in one hour, one hundred years ago. You’re sailing from London on the ocean liner New York. I’m here in the photo booth on Ellis Island, waiting for you, lightning man.
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