God rolling barrels

“Do you remember how terrified you were of Haddonfield’s fire-horn?”
That was my south Jersey aunt, soon to be 89, a teenager when I was about 4.
I hated being in Haddonfield at noon when the fire-department tested its fire-horn.
I now call it “auditory hallucinatin’,” sheer terror at loud noises.
I also hoped my elementary-school didn’t hold fire-drills, because the hallway fire-gong terrified me.
I remember once running into my fourth-grade cloak-room because I was crying due to that fire-gong.
“Auditory hallucinatin’” perhaps, but it was probably more my mother. “Bobby, STOP!” — Smack!
(Spare the child and spoil the rod!)
I also was terrified of thunder-and-lighting, and also camera-flash.
My hyper-religious parents clobbered me, and told me thunder was God rolling barrels.
Fear of loud noises wore off by age-10. But fear of thunder-and-lighting lasted until age-20.
Fear of camera-flash lasted a while too. Once a professional photographer photographed our family inside using camera-flash.
I was about age-8, and my parents were angry I couldn’t smile — I was crying.
Interestingly I could stand right next to a gigantic panting steam-locomotive.
Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines ran right through Haddonfield, and they were still using steam-engines in the late ‘40s.
That was different, I guess. My father was happy I liked “those dirty old steam-engines” (my mother).
Plus It was free entertainment.
One night in northern DE, after my family moved, a gigantic thunderstorm rolled through. I could hear my younger brothers crying.
I leaped upstairs, and threw open their bedroom door. I then threw open all the shades.
“Now watch!” I yelled. “Yer gonna see lurid flashes of lightning, and hear horrendous claps of thunder.”
My brother Jack started smiling through tears.
“I survived many thunderstorms, and you will too!”
This wasn’t my parents clobbering my brothers. It was me, the oldest, caring about them.
If I too had an older brother, I might not have been so terrified of Haddonfield’s fire-horn.

• “Haddonfield” was an old Revolutionary-War town in south Jersey near where I first lived.
• It’s normally “spare the rod and spoil the child.”
• “Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” (PRSL) is an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much parallel track. It was promulgated in 1933. It serviced mainly the south Jersey seashore from Philadelphia, by ferry across the Delaware River at first. The fact I’m a railfan is largely due to PRSL’s use of steam-engines until I was 12.