Ben and Barney — Why we love lightning

A thunderstorm with great flashes of lightning made Ben Franklin world famous as America’s most brilliant scientist. A lightning strike recently in my bucolic village of Goshen solved a mechanical problem that had rankled me all day.

For those of you who don’t think studying history is a fascinating pastime, let me briefly recap. For thousands of years, ever since homus erectus heard his first clap of thunder and watched his first bolt of lightning, mankind has searched for the origin and the meaning of the rumble of thunder in the skies.

Eventually, the ancient Greeks stopped trying to figure it out and unilaterally declared that lightning bolts were weapons of their gods. Zeus, being the chief honcho in their pantheon, was assigned the duty of hurling bolts of lightning and roaring thunder to chastise the bold and the bad.

But by the early 1700s, as the Enlightenment was engulfing Europe, scientists who were just beginning to tinker with electricity in Holland in Leyden jars (aptly named after the town of Leyden where the electric jar was invented) began to wonder if lightning was electricity. By now Zeus had been relegated to the mythology of the pagans.

Benjamin Franklin, an intuitive Colonial publisher in Philadelphia, took his son out in a roiling thunder storm and drew an electric spark off a key attached to a line holding a kite when it was struck by lightning. That wrapped it up: Lightning was electricity, which settled a dispute that been gnawing at men’s minds for millennia. Franklin’s next step: He devised the lightning rod and urged its widespread use. This simple invention has saved untold millions of homes, churches, tall buildings — and of course people — from being torched by a bolt from the wrath of old discredited Zeus.

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Me, I wasn’t experimenting with lightning, just hoping the great storm would quiet down and let me write this week’s vinegary column. But just before the storm, my computer printer crashed. I had been trying to coax it to copy a document, a simple task the printer’s maker touted as one of its strong points. Printer, scanner and copier, all in one. Wow, what a wondrous machine. Ben Franklin would ooh and aah over anything that could perform so many useful functions.

Now, I have successfully used the copy function before. But this time when I tried to copy a document most of the silly machine shut down. What do I mean by most of the machine? Machines either shut down or they don’t.

Not this mechanical monster. The power button went dark. But the scanning lights inside the machine were still on and the little screen was bright and cheery. I tried everything to bring the entire machine back to life, pushed every button like Liszt racing his fingers up and down his piano keyboard playing his impossibly difficult Etude No.4. I reset the printer a half-dozen times. And was about to hit it with a hammer. It was an aggravating hour. Nyet. Nothing. No power light.

I went to bed in a huff, swearing so loud it sent the cat racing around the house and running up and down the stairs and started the dog howling in her authentic imitation of a wolf.

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That night the skies over Northwest Connecticut exploded with the slashing savagery of lightning bolts hurled down on our bucolic farmstead. What offense had I committed to so enrage Zeus?

But wait. Some of Ben Franklin’s lightning must have rippled through the wires in our old house. By morning, while none of the appliances in the house powered by electricity were reduced to black ashes, they all had to be restarted again. Except one.

In my office I was all set to face down the printer but lo, the printer light now was ON. I pushed Start, the printer started humming and letters in my queue flowed out in a steady stream.

Zeus wasn’t mad at me. He was helping me out. He helped Ben many years ago; now it was my turn. The lightning turned my printer on again!

Next time I have computer/printer problems, I hope the weathermen will forecast for me a thunderstorm with lots of friendly lightning.

Freelance writer Barnett Laschever, the curmudgeon of Goshen, is writing a three-act play about a Revolutionary War hero. He’s also the author of five children’s books and co-author of “Connecticut, An Explorer’s Guide,� hot off the press in its seventh edition.