It was a freak, an aberration of nature, and 83-year-old Burton Schuckers can’t figure out why he was its victim.

Twenty thousand feet over Ohio Street in Bangor, a thunderstorm was sweeping by Monday afternoon. Within the storm cell, ice pellets were being thrown up and down, gathering speed and size, until the whole load became too heavy for the cell to hold.

Just a few minutes after 3 p.m. (Schuckers is exact about the time because his wife, Susan, had just finished watching her soap opera), the storm destabilized and, in a dramatic flourish, dumped buckets of marble-size hail onto Schuckers’ garden.

Within minutes, his prize tomatoes, green peppers, onions and beans were pummeled into mush, leaving behind an iced gazpacho in place of the vegetables he has been tending for months.

“I’m just flabbergasted, to tell the truth,” Schuckers said Tuesday.

For 35 years, Schuckers has planted a garden, starting the seeds in trays in the house around March 1, caring for the tender seedlings, then gently transplanting them outside.

For 35 years he has shared his bounty with Manna soup kitchen in Bangor, with his neighbors, his two daughters, and with a man down the road who makes green tomato relish.

For 35 years he and his wife cold-packed tomatoes, put up hundreds of jars of pickles and jams, froze broccoli and cauliflower.

Schuckers would get up at 4 a.m. each day, use a trowel as a shoehorn to put on his loafers, and work in the garden until it got hot.

Monday was no different.

After spending the morning making sure not a single weed trespassed between his rows, Schuckers went inside to lie down by the air conditioner.

“The minute I heard it on the roof, I knew it was hail,” he said. It rained ice for 15 minutes.

In a mile-long stretch of Ohio Street, hail smashed blooming snapdragons, ripped the leaves off trees and snapped small branches. Front lawns looked like it had snowed leaves. Paint was chipped from wooden siding, and air conditioner fins were dented and folded over.

The city had to send out the street sweeper to clean the road – twice. Although many places in Maine suffered through heavy rain and dangerous lightning Monday, Schuckers’ stretch of Ohio Street was distinctive in the level of hail devastation.

When it stopped, Schuckers looked out the window and saw a sea of ice across his lawn.

“I knew it was bad, so I said I wasn’t going to look at the garden until today,” he said Tuesday. “I knew it was finished.” He said there was so much ice that it didn’t melt until after dark.

Early Tuesday, Schuckers stepped into his breezeway, again used the trowel to put on his shoes. He slowly walked out to his garden, blinked his eyes and pronounced it a total loss.

“It looks like a lawn mower went through here,” Schuckers said.

Lettuce was pounded into the ground, and cornstalks were snapped in half. Schuckers’ cucumbers were unrecognizable. His broccoli leaves were shredded, and his pea vines were ripped from their wire fence. Small green tomatoes, pocked with hail holes, were scattered on the ground between the rows. Winter cabbage looked like Swiss cheese.

“This may be my last year,” Schuckers said.

Schuckers said he retired in 1986 from GTE Sylvania, which had a plant in Bangor. As he has aged, he has given up much that has provided him with entertainment.

“I used to raise beagles and hunt; I sold my snowmobile,” he said. “My garden was all I had.”

Standing beside his ruined vegetables Tuesday afternoon, Schuckers looked at the wreckage and pulled on a wry smile.

“I’ve been watering the peas every night,” he said. “Just imagine, yesterday I was wishing for rain.”