Lightning strike spares Effingham man’s backyard cross

EFFINGHAM — Bubba McCutcheon knew a “cloud was a coming up” Thursday, so he turned off his TV and all his other electronic equipment to concentrate on a book.

He was jacked back in his La-Z-Boy with his dogs Melody and Chrissy as close to him as they could get because they are terrified of thunder. They sniffed a major rumble in the air.

But none of them were prepared for earth-shattering clap that came when a bolt of lightning took dead aim at a pine tree in McCutcheon’s back yard.

“It scared the tar out of me,” McCutcheon said eyeing the tree. “It rattled my house and everything in it. I looked out the back but didn’t really see anything. I knew it hit close somewhere because I saw some bark on the ground.”

But then the dogs started barking because people were assembling in McCutcheon’s back yard. They were murmuring and pointing at a pine tree that has a large wooden cross on it. The cross was put up as a Christmas decoration and can be lighted during the holiday season.

What caught peoples’ attention was the way the lightning struck the tree. It hit the top of the tree and dug a thin line down to the top of the cross, where it stopped. The thin line returned at the bottom of the cross down to the ground.

“It’s just funny how it stopped where it stopped,” McCutcheon said. “That’s what started people talking. It peeled the bark off in a straight line to the top of the cross.”

McCutcheon still didn’t think it was a big deal until his daughter contacted him. She lives in Lenoir, N.C., and saw a picture of the tree on the Internet.

And once it hit the Internet, that many more people started stopping by to take pictures and marvel at the lightning’s perceived respect for the cross.

“Some people try to make something out of it, but I don’t know,” McCutcheon said. “I wouldn’t want to say. Maybe somebody up there might be trying to tell me something.

“I just don’t know. I didn’t put any significance on it to start with, but other people did. All I know is it (bolt of lightning) liked to knock me out of my easy chair and Melody and Chrissy were doing all they could to climb up in my lap.”

McCutcheon said he’s talked with a person in the tree cutting business. The tree cutter told him he would have to take the tree down because it would eventually die.

But that’s not anything McCutcheon is going to rush into in the next week or two. Having people stop by is reminiscent of the years he owned Bubba’s Pit Stop at “the edge of the road” near his house. Bubba’s was an country convenience store that McCutcheon ran from 1976 to 2000.