Amite City, LA is a beautiful little town with picturesque charm and a sense of community you're unlikely to find most anywhere else you go.

 

Now, as the story goes, one sweltering summer day many years back there was a storm unlike anyone could scarce recall. The thunder rolled through town like a cavalcade of cannonballs. And when the lightning struck, well, it stuck! Really stuck! Right there at the corner of Lime and Oak Streets - a thunderbolt standing smack in the road. Just as still as a grave, like it had nowhere to go.

 

The old timers say no one dared to get too close. No one except old Mr. Dufour. He walked right up like that sort of thing happened every day. And word is, he reached right out and touched that lightning.

 

“Silky smooth,” he’s said to have murmured. “Although it does give one a bit of a tingle.”

 

Then he reached right up with his pocket knife, cut a piece off, slipped it in his pocket and walked away. Whistling his favorite tune all the while, I might add.

 

Next morning, when the sun rose, that lightning was gone.

 

 

 

Nobody knows for certain what Mr. Dufour did with that piece of lightning he sliced off. Some say he stowed it under his mattress to keep him warm at night while he slept. Others think he dropped it in the Tangipahoa River and just watched it float away. Then there are the select few who are of the notion that there’s a little sliver of that lightning bolt in every bottle of Louisiana Lightning Sour Mash Whiskey, and that’s why it’s so silky smooth.

 

Truth be told, who’s to say if any of this has a grain of fact to it? Just another Louisiana legend for all one knows. But like much of what happens in Tangipahoa Parish, this just begs for further examination.

 

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