By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Lightning Strikes
Just when I thought life had gone to hell came word human deaths by lightning have dropped from 300-plus per annum in the 1940s to only 13 so far this year. Now there’s more people, or targets, too.
Why? As for more people, birds do it, bees do it. Fewer lightning deaths? “As a society,” says Harold Brooks of the National Weather Service, “we spend less time outdoors. Especially farmers. There aren’t as many around.”
Some of that attrition is due to lightning. I’m concerned my daughter will see these numbers. Good luck telling her to shut off her laptop or latest gizmo, go outside and do something healthy the way I used to.
“That’s why so many geezers like you are fried,” I can hear her saying. Better that than discussing other youthful indiscretions.
“When I was your age,” I’d say, “we would go outside with transistor radios …”
“What?”
“… and listen to music while we did healthy things in nature. Well, mostly healthy. Remember Lou Christie’s 1966 hit song ‘Lightning Strikes’?”
“I was minus 34 years old then,” my daughter would say.
“Then maybe not. It was pretty schizoid. First Lou sang he can’t settle down to one girl, then that his one girl has to be trustworthy, pure and true. Yet whenever tempted — “When I see/lips beggin’ to be kissed (stop)/I can’t stop (stop)/I can’t stop …” Then, falsetto: “Lightning is striking again …”
“If you got hit in the nuts with a bolt, you might sing falsetto too.”
“Shush,” I’d say. “It’s hard getting old. All that time in the sun. Maybe too much. I was thinking of moving to Rancho Cucamonga till I read that California city is ranked one of the 10 worst for retiring.”
“Why move to Rancho Cucamonga?”
“For ranches.”
“We have them here.” She’d say.
“Cucamongas?”
She’d be stumped. I was too until Googling to learn “cucamonga” comes from a Tongya term for a “sandy place” or in Jack Benny joke. In the latter, an announcer says a train is preparing to leave on track five for Azusa, Anaheim and Cuc amonga” … a route Jack’s Los Angeles listeners knew did not exist. Benny’s friend Mel Blanc, as the voice of Daffy Duck, did a parody.”
“Fasci … zzz,” she would say.
Now where should I retire to? The main knocks on Rancho Cucamonga is it’s costly, there’s little to do and healthcare sucks. Not as bad as Newark, N.J., the worst-rated city, but right down there.
Orlando, Miami and Tampa, Fla., rank 1-2-3 as Best Places to Retire, in the website WalletHub’s estimation. Where does lightning strike most often in the United States? Between Tampa and Orlando, says the National Severe Storms Laboratory. Hmmm …
“This is due,” the NSSL explains, “to the presence, on many days during the year, of a large moisture content in the atmosphere at low levels (below 5,000 feet), as well as high surface temperatures that produce strong sea breezes along the Florida coasts.”
So Old Fogy Heaven gets zapped most, if you trust science. Not me. I think it’s God seeking retribution for us listening to Lou Christie. Born Lugee Alfredo Giovannie Sacco, he made out in the ‘60s with more irritating hit songs such as “Rhapsody in the Rain” and “Two Faces Have I.” What were we thinking then? Were we thinking?
Statistics show men are four times more likely to get killed by lightning than women because we do dumber and riskier things. Most such deaths come near water. Given the nature of Saugatuck-Douglas and myself, I am toast.
Lightning strikes Rancho Cucamonga less. So what if it’s boring, I can’t afford it and, if I do get hit, healthcare is so bad that I’m a goner? What time does the train depart?
