A few minutes later my uncle and grampa returned from their South Dakota wanderings, just as it started to rain. A minute later my father walked in, and we listened to John and grampa talk about their trip. It started raining a bit harder. I glanced through the kitchen door and out the porch and saw rain blowing sideways and it was just a summer thunderstorm until all of us heard the first dull thunks of ice falling on the metal roofs of the barn and outbuildings, and we all filed silently out to the porch to watch bits of frozen rain bounce off the lawn and sidewalk. None of us said anything, but had I asked I’m certain each of us would have articulated the same muddled thoughts:
I’ve seen mature August corn cut down to clean, bare, red-black earth. I’ve seen great oak trees denuded by ice pellets striking down their leaves. Right now I can see my car’s windshield battered down and ice covering my floor boards, wind-driven ice smashing its way into gramma’s kitchen, baseball-sized hail injuring the youngstock and dry cows.
Dodged a bullet, we did.
The summer storm has moved on, and late afternoon sun is shining in a bright blue sky, and if it weren’t for the two inches of melting pea-sized ice under the porch eaves you’d never guess that those few moments of dull, resigned, what-can-Mother-Nature-throw-at-me-next panic ever existed.