Road Apples by Tim Sanders
May 3, 2010

The lightning bug
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Last week I was reading excerpts from “Out of the Blue: A History of Lightning” by John Friedman. Among other things, this book tells the true story of Roy Sullivan, who still holds the Guinness World Record for surviving the most lightning strikes. Sullivan, known as the “Human Lightning Rod,” was a ranger in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park when he was first struck in 1942, with six more strikes coming at random intervals throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s.

This account, in conjunction with the usual dramatic springtime electrical storms here in Cherokee County, sparked (sorry) my interest in Sand Rock’s own Dewey “Lightning Bug” Culpepper, who according to local legend has been struck by lightning not seven, but nine times, and is still with us. I decided to pay Mr. Culpepper a visit.

Mrs. Culpepper answered the door, and led me through a dark hallway into the living room. There were no electric lights, the shades were drawn, and only a kerosene lamp illuminated the dreary scene. Dewey sat atop a large pile of feather pillows, wearing a yellow raincoat and an old pair of rubber galoshes. There was a glass fruit bowl on his head. He appeared not to notice me at all.

“Is he all right?” I asked.

“As all right as he’ll ever be,” his wife replied. “He thinks he’s insulated now.”
“Could I talk to him?”

“Dewey he don’t hardly never make no sense anymore,” she said.“You’d be as well off talking to that tomcat out on the porch.”

“HA-HA-HAMINAHAMINAHAMINA!” said Dewey, raising his index finger skyward.

“What does he mean by that?” I asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she whispered. “All I know is there’s some words, like ‘tomcat, water tower, and electric toothbrush’ that set him to babbling and waving his finger like he was tracking a fly on the ceiling.”

“When was his first lightning strike?” I asked.

“His momma she said the first one was back in 1963. Dewey and four other boys had climbed up the water tower to launch a kite, and there come up a cloud and it shot a lightning bolt right through that kite string and down onto that water tower. It didn’t touch none of them others, only Dewey. He weren’t even flying the kite; it was Ecil Sprayberry who had hold of the string, but that bolt arced from the string to Dewey just as slick as you please, and set his underwear on fire. There was a photo of them scorched boxers in the Gadsden paper.”

“It must have scared him to death!”

“At first it did, but after a few days his momma she said he got very cocky about it, and told all his friends he was undestructable. He went on thataway until a few months later, when he was up a walnut tree trying to fetch his tomcat down. There was only a light rain that day, but you know how bad cats is to attract electricity, even in dry weather.

So sure enough, a huge lightning bolt shot down in the direction of that cat, but missed its mark and hit poor little Dewey. Knocked him out of the tree, and his momma said they had to throw a bucket of water on his head to put out his hair which had caught fire. After that he become very religious on account of he figured God was trying to tell him something. He repented from all his cockiness about that first lightning strike and gave up swearing and chewing Skoal with the other boys. His momma she said he kept on thataway, going to church services and memorizing verses and everything, until he was sixteen, which was when that third bolt hit him while he was reading his testament out on that pier on Weiss Lake. Several people seen it, and said there was a flash of light and a loud KABOOM and a puff of smoke just like what happened to that little blonde girl in that Bad Seed movie, except that Dewey wasn’t vaporized, only hobbled some. That bolt knocked the religion right out of him, and also his front tooth.”

Dewey winced, and said “HAMINAHAMINAHAMINA!” again.

“Does he want something?” I asked.

“Can’t tell,” Mrs. Culpepper said. “He might want another Vienner sausage, and then again he might want us to hush and go outside.”

We did, and she continued. “After he backslid we got married and he had what he called his lightning vacation for several years. Then it started up again, and he was hit three more times in the seventies. In 1971 it run in on him while he was on the telephone and in 1973 it run in through the radio in the Buick. Once, I think it was in ‘78, it come through a screen door and melted the frames of his eyeglasses.

There was several experts called in, and they all had their own ideas about why Dewey was such a lightning magnet. One scientist he said it was because Dewey had iron rich blood, and another one from the University of Alabama he said it was all in Dewey’s jeans, so he got to where he couldn’t carry no coins nor anything metal in his pocket, but it didn’t help.

In 1993, I think it was April, a bolt run in on him while he was milking. Didn’t hurt the cow a bit, but clabbered the milk and blackened all of Dewey’s fingers. Then there was the time three years ago when the whole sky lit up and he was struck off the John Deere and lit on top of the chicken coop. We think he was up there for two hours, because his watch had stopped at 4:17 and we didn’t find him until 6:30. Then two weeks ago there was the electric toothbrush thing.”
“Electric toothbrush?”

“That one scorched his vocal cords. I seen the lights flicker and heard a loud CRACKITY-CRACK and run to the bathroom and there he stood with his electric toothbrush melted on the floor and his new partial plate in the sink, and his eyebrows smoking.

He ain’t been the same since that one. He disconnected the power and closed up the doors and windows. So here I sit, with no computer, no television, no electric lights, no stove, no electric can opener, and good old Dewey the Lightning Bug roosting in the living room like a 170-pound chicken, all insulated from top to bottom with feather pillows and rubber galoshes and raincoats and glass helmets.”

It was a very depressing interview. But on the bright side, when I was ready to leave and found I’d left the headlights on, Dewey “Lightning Bug” Culpepper was able to jump start my car with just two fingers.