A Crack and a Flash: A Peek Inside a 1920s Schoolhouse

By Joy Magnusson

Another horrific crack of thunder shook the little wooden schoolhouse. Some of the smaller kids jumped and Lizzie, the smallest member of the class, began to cry.

Thundershowers were hardly uncommon on the Alberta prairie in the warm season, so Teddy wasn’t too concerned. It was just a little distracting listening to the rain beating down on the wooden shingles above his head. The schoolhouse creaked under the pressure of the stronger gusts of wind. Outside, the tree-tops waved gently in the steadily increasing breeze and the horses whinnied. A couple of the other kids had horses to ride to school, but Teddy and his brother always walked from their home a couple of miles away. It had been a bit breezy on their way in this morning, but it was still clear. At lunch a half hour earlier, Teddy and the other kids had played baseball under a quickly darkening sky, but they hadn’t paid too much attention. It was only after they’d come back in for afternoon lessons that the storm had erupted.

Miss Day, the teacher, was in the front of the room trying to quiet Lizzie and the other first graders. That may be why she didn’t notice that the window by Teddy’s desk was still open. He considered closing it when the chill breeze started blowing through, but he’d stood in the corner before for getting out of his desk without permission.

Teddy watched as the rain pounded down, creating muddy puddles in the grass and on the road and poured of the edges of the roof.

Suddenly, with a violent crack of thunder, a white hot crackling ball of energy flashed into the yard! Before Teddy could holler in alarm, or even wonder what it was, the inexplicable thing began to swoop and dance around the yard. In a heartbeat, it rounded a clump of trees, took a low dive leaving a charred patch of grass, and hurled through the window into the classroom where it came to rest directly on Teddy’s knees!

There it sat for one, split, horrifying second before it, abruptly, crackled out of existence.
Teddy was paralysed with unimaginable pain! It was all he could do to start screaming uncontrollably.

In an instant, the schoolhouse was in an uproar with the little ones crying, the teacher barking orders, and the older kids running around hollering. One of the boys took off out the door, sprinting full speed to the nearest barnyard for a team and wagon to rush Teddy to the doctor.

It was only a couple of hours before the whole town was buzzing with the news that a boy at the schoolhouse had been struck by a rare natural phenomenon known as ball lightening.

That was the story that we were told by our kindly, older uncle with a walking stick and a permanent limp.