Lightning Comes From That Building – O Yu Yu Yo
When my father was discharged from the Army at the end of World War Two, he enrolled in a watchmaking school in Kansas City. By the time I came along, he was firmly employed at Sears Roebuck and Company as a watchmaker; a good one! Good enough to be recruited for a job at Friedman’s Jewelers, right across the street from Sears!
When things got too busy for the salesmen, Dad would get up from his work bench and help out with the customers. He started selling more than the salesmen, so the store owner placed dad on a salary-plus-commission and hired another watchmaker to take Dad’s place. He brought home his watchmaker’s work bench and complete set of tools and set everything up in our already cramped bedroom. Often he would do barter work, exchanging expensive watch repairs with various friends in exchange for things like tropical fish from the owner of a pet store, or plumbing work or auto repairs. One client owned the Gordon Theater in West End, Atlanta, and also the Roosevelt Drive-In Theater in nearby College Park. Dad was paid for his watch repair work with free movie passes–lots of them! We hardly ever had paid to see a movie.
On our many jaunts to the Roosevelt Drive-In Theater, we would pass a steel mill. The main building at the mill was a huge pyramid-shaped building, several stories high. Every time we drove by that steel mill, I became fixated on the giant pyramid. One evening, again passing the steel mill on the way to the Drive-In (I was seven) I blurted out, “Lightning comes from that building!”
Dad smiled and tried to explain the weather patterns which produced lightning and thunder. “When warm air meets cold air, this causes static electricity, which must be discharged into the atmosphere and this produces an electrical impulse known as ‘lightning.’”
“Yeah,” I retorted, “well maybe that, too, . . . but lightning comes from that building!” I wouldn’t give up. This was something I knew deep down to be true, and no one was going to convince me otherwise! Not even my genius father.
Dad simply smiled and shrugged his shoulders, chalking up my announcement to the wild imaginings of a seven-year-old. We drove on to the Drive-In to see the movie, Forbidden Planet.
In the mid 1970s, my brother/friend and fellow entertainer/singer/songwriter, Chris “X” Cornish and I auditioned for a play at the Harlequin Dinner Theater. Chris won the male-lead role as outlaw Jesse James in the musical, Diamond Studs. Chris also got the male lead role as Leadville Johnny Brown in The Unsinkable Molly Brown.
Sharing a mutual interest in esoteric philosophy and the physics of music and science, Chris and I became close friends. In fact, I had had past life recall of being Chris’ friend and fellow musician in the middle ages, playing our lutes and fiddles while singing our cleverly arranged motets for royalty at festivals in the great medieval castles of Britain. One favorite topic of conversations was the idea of Reincarnation. I told Chris that I had a more than casual connection with ancient Egypt and the Great Pyramid. Chris recommended that I should read the book, Initiation, by Elizabeth Haich.
I purchased the book and was immediately captivated by the author’s past life recall of being a princess and daughter of the pharaoh Ptahhotep. The princess had begged and cajoled her father to allow her to be initiated into the higher mysteries in the Great Pyramid. Ptahhotep kept refusing her request, relenting only after her constant urging, Ptahhotep cautioned his daughter that she still had much yet to experience before she was ready for such a powerful and dangerous “undertaking.”
On page 151 of the book, I read in rapt fascination as Elizabeth tried to console her maid, whose angst and worry for her mistress’ initiation was the issue of the day. When I read the following, the memory of my childhood experience with the pyramid-shaped steel mill came flooding back to me. Here was confirmation that my intuition had been correct; that I was involved a lifetime, or perhaps more, in Egypt at the time of the pharaohs!

[From: Initiation, by Elizabeth Haich; Page 151.] “Menu, poor old fat Menu! She is so frightened at my words that she stops crying immediately, sits down on the floor beside my bed, and looks at me silently but with so much love, so much care and solicitude that I can’t help bursting out laughing. Throwing my arms about her, ‘Just calm down, Menu, I’m not going to send you away. Never. I love you. You’re the only person who really and truly loves me with all your heart. I’ll always want you with me. Just calm your fears. The initiation will not harm me, only help me! Ptahhotep (the princess’ father) will take care of me. He will always be with me.
“Then in leaving, Menu says, I really hope the initiation won’t harm you, but I am always afraid when I see the big flashes of lightning and hear the thunder coming out of the pyramids. I hope you won’t have anything to do with that.’
‘No, no, Menu, now be a good girl and go to bed,’ I tell her, and Menu leaves.
“But for a little while 
I ponder over her parting remark. Lightning and thunder coming out of the pyramids? Yes, it’s true. Ever since I was a little girl, I have known that lightning and thunder have struck out of the pyramid occasionally and after that it would rain. It was always as much a matter of course as life itself, and I never gave it a second thought. But now when I am initiated in the temple, I will probably learn the secret behind this phenomenon too.
Then with a great and wonderful feeling of expectation, I fall asleep.”[From Initiation, by Elizabeth Haich Page 151]