Somewhere far off, in the low-slung clouds in the eastern sky, a storm is brewing.
There’s a faint rumbling that sounds like a raucous party two or three doors down. The world has darkened and trees are stirring. The birds and bugs have gone silent, and that silence is foreboding.
A few fat raindrops splatter on the sizzling pavement. There’s another growl from the eastern sky and an angry gust of wind shrieks across the electrified landscape.
The anticipation is great. In downtown Lewiston, people stop what they are doing and glance at the sky with that weird mix of dread and glee. A guy with a Frisbee stops mid-hurl and blinks up at the raging heavens. A thug in Kennedy Park pauses just as he is about to knee a guy in the groin. A fellow in a ski mask halts in the pharmacy parking lot to marvel at the roiling black clouds above.
Mom Nature is coming, yo. Mom Nature’s going to rock our worlds.
In reality, though, the only mom that’s coming is the mother of anticlimax: Those black clouds, fat with menace just seconds ago, part to make way for the sun. The wind dies feebly and the ominous silence ends. The birds are chirping again. The insects are buzzing and the people of downtown Lewiston are going about their days.
What happened? Where is the drama of the looming storm?
I’ll tell you where it went: The storm slung its drama over its shoulder and hauled butt east and south and west and north. Within minutes, the news will be full of chatter about the wrath of the sky that so rocked Bethel and Oxford, Farmington and Eustis, Hartford and Buckfield, Gray and New Gloucester, East Prophylactic and West Gesundheit.
Everywhere but here, in other words.
From where I sit, Mom Nature tends to avoid Lewiston-Auburn like we’re something gooey on the sidewalk and she doesn’t want to get her feet grimy. She’ll tease us and tease us all day long but when it’s go time, she’s all like, “Lewiston? Nah, bruh. I’m gonna go knock some trees down in Livermore and absolutely wreck some kid’s tree fort.”
I fall for it every time.
This very day, storms have been threatening here in Lewiston for six hours. On Facebook, it looks like this:
BONNIE: “Ooh, big storm coming! I love me a big storm!”
MARY BETH: “Batten down the hatches, folks! We’re gonna get rocked!”
TODD: “Everybody be safe out there!”
CLARENCE: “Here it comes!”
GERTRUDE: “Here’s a picture of my dinner!”
And then, crickets are chirping. Literally.
Even the crickets have seen this storm bluff enough that they don’t sweat it anymore. Not Lewiston crickets. Lewiston crickets are street smart. They know a swindle when they see one.
And yes, I know that one shouldn’t wish for something as potentially destructive as a thunderstorm. But a big thunder-banger is something we never seem to grow out of. The earth-shaking wrath of nature awed us as wide-eyed children, and it awes us still as workaday adults who don’t thrill so easily.
Those slashes of lightning that seem to crack the sky into a hundred sizzling pieces. The crashing booms of lighting you can feel in your chest. A powerful thunderstorm is pure, unabashed fury that reconnects a man with his primal self. When the sky gods get to rampaging, we are but tiny, humble ants completely at the mercy of the stomping foot. The storm liberates us by taking away what power we think we possess.
At least that’s what they tell me from towns like Dixfield, Rumford and Avon. Avon, for lord’s sake! Why does a wee, perfume-sounding hamlet like that get the grand fireworks show while we here in the Unified Kingdom of Lewiston-Auburn go without?
I mean, no offense to the town of Avon and the Avonistas who live there. It’s just that I’m hot and sticky and bored and I was promised a thunderstorm today. I’m like that kid with the fishing pole and a bucket full of dreams who waits by the curb all day for a deadbeat dad who never comes.
It’s also possible that I’m starting to hallucinate a bit. It’s hot, yo!
• Fifteen minutes after I finished writing this masterpiece, day turned to night. The winds came howling and rain fell like pancakes on the baked earth. Once again, Lewiston tensed for the onslaught of nature. Once again, nature went elsewhere. Probably Avon.
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Avonistas can share their sweet tales of thunder at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
