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| No lights, big city |
The snow and ice storms of the 1960's had provided at least two or three extended powerless adventures during my family's time in northwest Iowa. This, I decided, had seasoned me for survival in a power void. As I recall, the only heat we had for those occasions came from the gas oven in the kitchen and a small fireplace in the living room. Because of the storms there was no school, however my brother and I were forced to do our homework under the rightfully jaundiced eye of dad. Because of this, we both longed for a warm classroom and the chance to hang with our guttersnipe pals in the back row just out of the teacher's range. (They could smack you around in those days. ) A cold house, homework and periodic trips outside to "stay ahead of our shoveling" were all part of the great parental plan to make us solid citizens. (The Calvinist ethic was writ large at our house. Too bad it didn't work.)
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| Shovel ready snow |
Linda brought no power outage skills to the situation. She assured me that, outside of minor gaps lasting only a few minutes of her idyllic childhood, Black Hills Power & Light had kept her family electrified to the max. I could tell this was going to be a steep learning curve.
In San Diego the ocean breezes make air conditioning a sometime thing. We seldom need it for more than one or two weeks during the late Summer. Ours had kicked on just the day before yesterday when the thermometer registered a sizzling 91 on the patio. With a straight face Linda said, "We'll just turn on the ceiling fans and button up the house and that'll be just fine." As soon as she said it she recognized the flaw in her logic. No electricity--no fans. Oops. While that sunk in I was mentally running through a list of ways to pass a power free evening and coming up short. TV? NO! Shoot Pool? Well, it would be easier to cheat in the dark. That had possibilities. After those two I was left with only the option of reading, something we both like to do. For that one all we needed was some light.
I began to round up all the flashlights and candles in the house and fetched a long forgotten kerosene lamp from a dusty shelf. Surely the power would be back on before nightfall. Wouldn't it?
It wouldn't.
As darkness crept up the hill and surrounded us we realized that this was not going to be over soon. It was amazing to look out on the neighborhood and see only the dim flicker of candles, flashlights and a few fire rings. We were lucky to be at home. Folks leaving work had to deal with no traffic signals, gas stations that couldn't pump fuel and streets that looked very different with no lights. A simple mistake at a power plant had turned back the clock by more than a hundred years and all of us had to deal with it. I couldn't help but reflect on the very real fact that all four of my grandparents, and Linda's too, had grown to adulthood without benefit of electricity and how very different their world had been. In many important respects that world may have been better. Certainly it was quieter and more leisurely. The outdoor plumbing experience they can keep.
The power returned to our neck of the woods sometime after 3 this morning and we are slowly getting clocks re-set, computers re-booted and coffee made. We have surveyed the freezer and refrigerator and have recorded only a half filled carton of strawberry ice cream in the casualty column. Not bad; it could have been much worse. I consider this as we roll into a weekend of 9/11 remembrance. Thoughts and prayers go out to other Americans who will never be the same because of what they lost just ten years ago this Sunday. Maybe minor inconveniences like a power outage are just what we need for perspective. How else to grasp a loss so great or a wound so deep? We must never again look and fail to see or call by name an evil so vile and depraved.
We begin by not forgetting.
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