Down below, in a fold of the hills where the Pyrme River marked the border with Syr, a farmhouse roof was burning.

Once, as other children looked on in amazement, and possibly in horror, I jumped from a farmhouse roof to hard-packed, grassless ground about 12 feet below.

It ripped off the farmhouse roof as the men cowered below, throwing 40-pound asbestos shingles 400 feet and then driving them into the ground like meteors.

Lightning could knock shingles from a farmhouse roof, but it could hardly damage an industrial plant, even an old one.

"I had a little problem with their lines; sometimes one didn't seem to follow another," recalls Mr. Garrison, who came down from fixing his farmhouse roof to talk about the movie over the phone.

He couldn't see the fight at the window from his angle, but he did see the trembling branches of the elm above the corner of the farmhouse roof.

Ivan groaned, angered that one had escaped, and rolled to his back-and saw Danica kneeling on the farmhouse roof, crossbow loaded and level.

He gestured to the satellite dishes on neighboring farmhouse roofs.

On 23 September 1779, Jones fired a cannonball at the town; fortunately it missed the church tower and landed in a field before striking a farmhouse roof.

He nodded at the northern sky over the farmhouse roof; the clouds there seemed to be growing darker, massing in ominous grey mounds with a yellowish tinge.