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Hogskin Creek, Kentucky, November 26, 1914
The worst thunderstorm in fifty years rolled over the ridge just as the Mullins family sat down to eat. Rain hammered the tin roof like buckshot, and lightning popped so close the hair stood up on the dog’s back.
Uncle Floyd had just carved the turkey when nature called louder than the blessing. He grabbed the Sears catalog, hollered “Save me a drumstick,” and made a dash for the little two-holer behind the house. He’d no sooner latched the door than a bolt of lightning hit the roof square-on.
KA-BLAM! The outhouse exploded into kindling. Floyd came flying out the door like he’d been shot from a cannon—britches around his ankles, catalog pages fluttering like confetti, landing face-first in the hog pen twenty feet away. The hogs scattered squealing.
The family poured out on the porch expecting to see a corpse. Instead they saw Floyd sitting in hog slop, stark naked except for one boot and a strip of scorched underwear, staring at the smoking crater where the privy used to be.
He looked up at the sky, shook his fist, and yelled, “Lord, I said grace like always! Was that necessary?”
Lightning flashed again, but this time it only flickered—like the Almighty was laughing.
They dragged Floyd in, wrapped him in Grandma’s crazy quilt, and sat him at the head of the table. He ate three helpings of everything, declaring it the best meal he’d ever tasted “this side of the pearly gates.” From that day on, every Thanksgiving the Mullins men used the chamber pot under the bed when storms threatened, and nobody ever complained about the smell.
The new outhouse was built twenty yards farther from the house, made of solid oak, and grounded with a copper rod. They painted across the door in big white letters: “FLOYD’S FOLLY—LIGHTNING-PROOF.”
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