Grey Thunder

As a boy, I lived in the midwest. It was hot and humid in August, the time of the year I plagued my mother for solutions to my late summer boredom. Summer friendships were waning, the resumption of school a faint glimmer on a nine year old's horizon. What made it all bearable were the evenings. The setting sun lowered the temperature and brought out the lightening bugs. It often also brought out the lightening, along with thunder and terrific rain. What a show, different than the Fourth of July and often better, since the rain cooled things off. If we were going on vacation, a trip to Crooked Lake in Northern Indiana, our soaked backyard became a wiggling mass of nightcrawlers available for capture.
Some fifty years later, I live in the much cooler Pacific Northwest, lightening starts forest fires, summer rains are rare, and I don't think I've ever seen a genuine wild nightcrawler. Last night it was hot, but the only thunder was from the old car cruise. Car enthusiasts, mostlly men, mostly my age, drive a circular route through my little town showing off their restored and often revamped hot rods. '57 Chevies, old Ford roadsters, chopped and lowered, chromed and colored with candy-flake paint they creep down the street and whenever possible they gun their engines. The local police don't like this, but even old boys will be boys, so sporadic loud "va-rooms" are the order of the night. It's a show and it's loud but it doesn't bring out the worms.