Lightning Strikes Twice

When I was growing up in Iowa in the 1940s, fierce lightning and thunderstorms, or twisters that uprooted huge trees all across town, often sent us scrambling to the storm cellar or basement. It was then that my mother sometimes mentioned that her grandfather had been killed by lightning. "And little Essie, too," Ma always added, speaking the words "little Essie" with a kind of reverence.