A true story

 

Grampa lived a half mile up the hill in a log house.  Behind the house were five huge pine trees.  Behind the trees were the mountains.

The mountains were 9000 feet high and were covered with forests.  Grampa loved the mountains and the forests, and he loved his mountain valley.

Some people didn't like the mountains.  Once some visitors came from the Midwest where everything is flat.  The mountains made them feel closed in.

The pioneers on the Oregon Trail hadn't liked the mountains, either.  Some of them cried when they saw the mountains because they knew they'd have to cross them.  They were so high that they looked like a resting place for the clouds.

The mountains and the clouds made the thunder.  On hot summer days the clouds had to rise up high to get over the mountains.  Sometimes in the late afternoon, dark cumulonimbus clouds from the west would build up.  Grampa called them thunderheads.

He'd sit out on his deck and watch the thunderheads build.  The clouds would get darker and darker, and then the thunder would start.  First it would be far back in the mountains.  The storm would get closer and closer until it was just overhead.  Lightning would flash, and the thunder would roll.

That's when Grampa started shouting.

"Hey, up there!  Cut that out!"

You could hear him shouting clear down at our house.

It was fun to be up at Grampa's house when the shouting started.  Grampa explained that the thunder was caused by a guy up in the sky hauling a wagonload of rocks across a wooden bridge.  You could hear the rocks jostling together, and in your imagination you could see the wagon and the bridge.

When I was little I wanted to be scared of the thunder.  But what's so scary about a guy with a wagonload of rocks?  It's no fun to be scared, so I started shouting at the thunder with Grampa.

"Hey, up there!  Cut that out!"

And the guy would eventually stop.