The overpass had been there for years…like that place to get donuts…..like that guy who fed pigeons at that bus stop on the line that long stopped service. It simply was. The neighborhood was humble and generally quiet aside from the cars passing overhead or the horn honk at times like some odd bird passing high above. The thunderstorm formed in the summer heat and just sat in place to the west of the neighborhood, not an unusual occurrence.
Laundry blew on clotheslines and grass bent toward the storm. A man proclaimed how odd this was, this wind toward the storm. The meteorologist would know that this was inflow winds and was not unusual at all. The father played catch with his surly teenage son as the wind blew. His daughter was a bit alarmed when the bolts of lightning began to flash within the narrow rain shaft west of the overpass and town. When the lightning became more frequent it was time to go inside. The old adage “ lightning never strikes twice” was disproven in the early twentieth century when the empire state building was seen many times being struck 3 or 4 times in a single summer thunderstorm. The father and a few neighbors knew none of this and spoke of the storm as odd.