Jeff Klinkenberg: Tad Staples savors summer, especially afternoons when the cumulus clouds pile up like dumplings before turning gray and ugly. He likes when the atmosphere above Florida develops late afternoon indigestion. First there are the little rumbles, then the dramatic rolls. When the main course arrives he can hardly contain himself. He attaches two microphones to the screen front door. He clicks on his tape deck. He listens to what he is recording through headphones. As the tempest peaks, as the wind howls and the frontyard maple bends — as the crash-boom-bah apocalypse seems imminent — you can see him standing in the dim light, swaying to music that has moved his soul.
Staples, 56, is Florida’s Thunderman. He keeps track of it for the rest of us. It’s his hobby. He likes its majesty and power. He collects it on tape and in his memory. He listens, he critiques, he interprets.
Sometimes he sells a recording to a sound-effects company, but that’s just icing on the cake. Thunder is everything in his other­wise small world. He is always surprised when he discovers other people who lack his enthusiasm about thunder. They may tell him they are fascinated but they lie. He telephones, they don’t answer. He leaves a voice mail, they don’t call back.
“They just flap their gums about being interested,” he says after the latest bout of hurt feelings.
(Video)
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