Thunderstorms in Appalachia

It was a warm May evening in Appalachia when my grandmother was struck by lightening.

A thunderstorm crawled along the summit of Stone Creek Ridge, the rain tapered off, and Esther, my grandmother, thought it was safe to go outside to check on our new hactched baby chickens.

She and I hatched seven chicks in an incubator purchased from a garden catalog. It took exactly 21 days from the time we first turned on the light bulb until the day I finally understood the theory of the birds and the bees.

We placed the eggs we stole from underneath our favorite chicken, Sally and carefully layed them inside a yellow plastic incubator which sat next to a red lava lamp on the television.

The eggs glowed for weeks under a bright white light while grandma forced me to watch the Lawrence Welk Show and wait for those eggs to hatch.

I was responsible for turning the eggs three times each day as they warmed under the warming light.

"Over easy," she instructed.

If the eggs are not rolled around under the light, they will fail to hatch, according to my grandma.

The bright yellow hatchlings pecked their way into the world to the sounds of a polka tune on Lawrence Welk.

I bounced back and forth, kicking my legs up in the air as my chickens pecked their way into the real world and got a good look at the boy who carefully nursed them to life inside a platic womb of sorts.

My mouth opened widely and I crowed with a bright smile as the eggs started to come to life. My two front teeth were missing and I ran my tongue back and forth in the gap on my gum line wishing I too had a beak for cracking shells like the pee-pees had.

We kept the chicks inside grandma’s trailer for a few days before putting them outside in a specially designed bird cage for baby chicks.

Lawrence Welk waved his magic stick on television and I allowed the baby chicks to run across the palms of my hand as we all swayed to the music of yesterday.

The thunderstom that blew over our farm in May of 1972 was fierce. Grandma and I both thought we may have lost the yellow birds to the wind.

Trees had lost the limbs during the windstorm. Part of the roof from our tool shed had blew off, and it appeared as though a tornado may have touched down.

"Go save the pee-pees, grandma! Go save the pee-pees!" I cried, trembling from the loud thunderbursts.

We watched those eggs, night after night and were just as protective for their lives as a mother hen would be.

The thunderstorm rocked my grandmother’s pink mobile home. I realized that the small wooden box built with chicken wire, wood found behind the barn and rusty nails taken from a scrap pile of of odds and ends in the tool shed may not be strong enough to withstand the power of the storm.

It seemed very likely that the tiny hen house, where the hand cultivated chicks now lived, may have blown away in the storm.

Grandma knew it wasn’t safe to step outside yet but she loved the chicks as much as I.

She gave me orders not to turn on the television and to stay away from the windows while she prepared a meal for her frightened baby chicks, pinned up in a wooden box at the south end of the apple orchard.

She boiled three eggs and tore out the greenish-yellow balls inside. She crushed the yokes with a fork and put the meal into a mason jar lid.

She ran barfoot across the wet grass to check on the chicks.

Their home was still standing.

Grandma was relieved.

The fresh country air turned greenish blue, like the color of a boiled egg yolk, and grandma's bright red hair stood on ends.

The mason lid lit up with bright orange fire, scrambling the chick’s meal of yolk morsels across the damp lawn.

I eventually grew tired of waiting in suspense for her return and left the trailer without permission.

I saw her laying motionless on the ground with the jar lid burned into her hand and still smoking.

I rolled her around, like a egg inside an incubator and she pecked her way back to life.