Edward ors, on assig for Folks, set out to interview nine people who had been struck by lightning. "Nine?" he said to his editor, Penfield. "en," said Penfield, "doesnt matter, but it has to be more tha." "Why?" asked ors, and Penfield said that the layout was scheduled for five pages and they wa least two people who had been struck by lightning per page plus somebody pretty sensational for the opening page. "Slightly wonderful," said Penfield, "nice body, I dont have to tell you, somebody with a special face. Also, struck by lightning."
ors advertised in the Village Voice for people who had been struck by lightning and would be willing to talk for publication about the experiend in no time at all was getting phone calls. A number of the callers, it appeared, had great-grandfathers randmothers who had also been struck by lightning, usually knocked from the fro of a buck-board on a try road in 1910. ors took down names and addresses and made appois for interviews, trying to dis from the voices if any of the women callers might be, in the magazierms, wonderful.
ors had been a reporter for ten years and a freelancer for five, with six years iween as a PR man for Topsy Oil in Midland-Odessa. As a reporter he had beeed, solid, underpaid, in love with his work, a specialist in business news, a scholar of the regulatencies and their eternal gavotte with the Seven Sisters, a man who knew what should be doh natural gas, with nuclear power, who knew blocks and monkey boards and Austin chalk, who kept his own personal hard hat ("Welltech") on top of a filing et in his office. When his wife pointed out, eventually, that he wasnt making enough money (absolutely true!) he had goh Topsy, whose PR chief had been dropping handkerchiefs in his viity for several years. Signing on with Topsy, he had tripled his salary, bought four moderately expensive suits, enjoyed (briefly) the esteem of his wife, and spent his time writiher incredibly dreary releases about corporate doings or speeches in praise of free enterprise for the panys C.E.O., E. H. ("Bug") Ludwig, a round, amiable, anding man of whom he was very fond. When ors wife left him for a racquetball pro attached to the Big Spring try Club he decided he could afford to be pain aed Topsy, renting a dismal rear apartment on Lafayette Street in New York and patg an iogether by writing for a wide variety of publications, classical record reviews fh Fidelity, Times Travel pieces ("Pals Fabulous Beaches"), exposes for Penthouse ("Ihe Trilateral ission"). To each assig he brought a good brain, a good eye, a tenacious thhness, gusto. He was forty-five, making a thin living, curious about people who had been struck by lightning.
The first maerviewed was a thirty-eight-year-old tile setter named Burch who had been struck by lightning in February 1978 and had immediately bee a Jehovahs Witness. "It was the best thing that ever happeo me," said Burch, "in a way." He was a calm, rather handsome man with pale blond hair cut short, military style, and aly spare (deep grays and browns) apartment in the West Twenties which looked, to ors, as if a decorator had been involved. "I was ing back from a job in New Rochelle," said Burch, "and I had a flat. It was clouding up pretty good and I wao get the tire ged before the rain started. I had the tire off and was just about to put the spare ohere was this just terrific crash and I was flat on my ba the middle of the road. Khe tire tool bout a hundred fe