On a dead circuit like the one the OP has, the AM radio trick works with either a commercially available tone generator or the cheap route, using a door buzzer muffled somehow, towel or container, with one wire coming off it to feed the RF noise into the light string so it can be traced with the pocket AM radio. I've traced many a wire inside a wall using this method. Oh yea, the buzzer can be powered by either a battery or doorbell transformer. It will make a lot of RF noise regardless.
TDD
It isn't that hard to pull wires up a wall from below.
Jerry
Did you look in the basement under that part of the house? Transformer may be right under the counter. It's illegal to hide it in the wall. Or could it be under the counter? My bet is the basement, maybe even near the breaker panel. Look for small wires down there too.
As promised, this is my report back about what I found:
It took 10 months but I finally found time to to go up to the attic and found a blown transformer attached to the ceiling joists. I replaced it and all is well. The transformer was one of the newer switching types rather than a real 60 Hz transformer. One of its internal components was literally blown off the circuit board by the lightning strike. I think it was a resistor but it was hard to tell because the whole thing was potted in some sort of epoxy. There was a chunk of epoxy loose in the box with half of the component embedded in it. The other half was still on the circuit board.
thanks for the update its nice to know how things worked out
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