Thundering of Bowling Angels and Rolling Bread Wagons

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. My name is Julia Stillwell, and I’m calling from Hampton, Virginia.

Hi, Julia. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

When I was a little girl, I was horribly afraid of thunderstorms. And my grandmother would always try to help me feel better by telling me that it was the old man dropping his sack of potatoes in heaven.

Aww.

Which was very sweet, and probably from that clue you might be able to guess that my whole family, both sides, immigrated from Ireland during the Irish potato famine. Here recently, my son got married, had, I guess, a seventh grandchild, but his wife is Hispanic. And it got me to thinking about what other cultures, what type of references did they use or stories did they tell to their children about storms or thunder? And I was just curious to get some info on it.

What a great question that is. Martha, I think there are a lot of similarities across cultures, aren’t there?

There sure are. I mean, it’s the same sound wherever you go, right? Yeah, there are lots of phrases in English anyway involving potatoes and to explain the sound of thunder, like the potato wagons are rolling. Or I have a friend who used to say the tater wagons going over the bridge or the potato wagon broke down. Somebody used to say God is dumping out potatoes and washing them off, which I really like. And another one from Appalachia is the Lord’s bread wagon or the Lord’s corn wagon is going over the bridge or, you know, rumbling along. They talk about the Lord’s bread wagon. And let’s see, what else? Oh, I know somebody who used to say the angels are moving the furniture.

Oh, yeah. Or God or the devil or St. Peter.

Oh, I have heard that one. Yeah. Or St. Peter’s going bowling.

Well, yeah, every place that you’ve heard those with potatoes, you can replace them with bowling balls or you can replace them with barrels.

Well, that is true. So it doesn’t have anything to do with my Irish heritage.

Oh, it could. It just has to do with potatoes falling, sounds like that.

Well, I don’t know. Maybe the Ukrainians also would use potatoes because they also have a potato-heavy culture. There are some gentler ones that I really love that clouds are bumping together, angels are baking cookies. And a modern one that I absolutely love is God is taking out the garbage cans.

That’s a good enough. That definitely is what that sounds like.

Right? It’s that thumpity thump thump of a garbage can that doesn’t have very much in it.

So, Julia, when your family used this expression and you were a little kid, was this reassuring to you?

Yes, it was. You could picture it. And then even now, today, when I hear it thunder outside, I think of some man up there dropping his bag of potatoes.

Yeah, a kindly old fellow. And the potatoes mean food eventually, right?

Yep, that’s it. But you know what, Julia? I bet that we have listeners out there with other versions of this.

Oh, please. And possibly other versions in other languages. So I hope you’ll stay tuned and listen for more.

I listen every week, so I definitely will stay tuned.

All right, take care of yourselves.

Thank you both so much.

Our pleasure.

Call again sometime, Julia.

Thanks for calling, Julia.

I will.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Well, as Martha said, we want to hear what you learned to say was happening in the skies when thunder and lightning happened. What was the folklore that was passed down in your family? 877-929-9673.

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