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A Day In The Life Of An Average American Family (Page 2)
I was traveling home late one evening after a Wakefield gig, driving several hours through a tremendous thunderstorm. I often had to slow down my car in fear that the occasional hail stones that fell would break through my windshield at normal driving speeds.
As I approached home (home at the time was the middle apartment in a three story apartment complex), it was welcome sight. I walked up the stairs and unlocked the door quietly, hoping not to disturb my sleeping wife.
As the door opened, I was amazed to find my wife still up. She had been waiting up several hours for my return. She was wide-eyed, and there was excitement in her face. She explained her earlier experience.
She was trying to sleep, but because of the storm she could not. It was late, but she thought she would get a hot cup of cocoa and sit up for a little while longer. The storm was raging outside and it felt good to be safe and warm inside our cozy little apartment. As she sat on the sofa sipping her hot chocolate, she was startled by a loud crack outside the balcony. She stood up and opened the patio doors to see what could have caused the loud noise. She leaned her head out over the balcony slightly, fearful of the small hailstones which were occasionally falling. As she peered over the edge, she was shocked to see among the many smaller hailstones scattered across the lawn, an incredibly large hailstone on the sidewalk below.
Of course, I didn’t believe a word of this story! But, this was just what my wife had expected. She quickly pointed out that she held the evidence in its original state…stored in the freezer. I quickly went to the freezer (the kind just above the refrigerator…at perfect eye level) and opened it in amazement. There it was. A giant hailstone nearly the size of a football!
Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep much that night. I kept wondering how I could get into the Guiness Book of World Records. I could see it now: A picture of me holding the world’s largest hailstone!
As soon as I got up the next morning, I called the local university to discuss my find with an old professor. I was soon connected to the science department and my old mentor. I asked him what the largest hailstone on record was. He told me it was around softball size. This got me even more excited! I could not contain myself as I told him I had one the size of a football! He, like myself the previous evening, thought I was pulling his leg. But I assured him I had the proof stored in my freezer.
I now knew this was big. I proceeded to call the local newspaper. Once connected to the news desk, I proclaimed I had the world’s largest hailstone in my possession, and if they knew a good story when they heard it, they had better send out a reporter and a photographer because this was big (a pun!). They said they would send someone out to investigate. I went down the stairs to wait outside for the news crew.
I was waiting for awhile and getting a little thirsty, so I returned up to the apartment to get a soda. As I entered the apartment I saw Sally, our upstairs neighbor, in the apartment talking with my wife. I asked her if she had heard the news (being so proud of our new discovery). Unexpectedly, she didn’t say a thing, but only covered her mouth and began to giggle as she walked quickly by me out the front door.
I looked at my wife thinking Sally was certainly acting strange, only to notice my wife now had the look of shear shock upon her face. She asked me not to get mad. I thought this is strange behavior for a couple that was about to become famous!
That’s when she told me the situation: Sally had been up late last night also. Being in one of those house-cleaning moods, she had decided to defrost her freezer, and in doing so, removed some very large pieces of ice. The pieces were much too large to let sit in the sink to melt. She got the idea, since it was already hailing outside, she would just throw the ice off her third story balcony to mingle below among the already millions of smaller hailstones!
The look that was first on my wife’s face migrated instantly to mine. In fact, I couldn’t change it for hours.
Later that morning, the local newspaper received a phone call from a small humble voice saying: “please disregard the previous hailstone caller”.
The World's Largest Hailstone
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