We dashed off fairly early this past Saturday to go to Greensboro to shop. Eagerly, we donned our day-off duds and sped off up the highway after a healthy breakfast made with provender from our well-stocked fridge. First we headed to Ollie’s to look for deals on Halloween decorations. After, we got lunch and then headed to Costco to get some more provisions. We were just blithely enjoying day one of a long weekend, much needed after several grim and grueling weeks. As usual, we lost ourselves in Costco and by the time we were wheeling our giant buggy to our car, the storm was building and the wind was blowing hard. We got the car loaded as fat drops started to fall and got in, just as the bottom fell out.
I have driven through some wild storms in my adult life, but few were as hair-raising as that one. Saturday's storm was the heaviest rain and straight-line winds I have ever experienced. As we tooled along at not more than 25 mph, debris from the trees surrounding the highway filled the roadway and made our progress dubious at best. Everyone had their flashers on. Everyone trundled along. Small gatherings huddled under bridges and overpasses hoping to evade the shocking downpour. As we slowly neared home, our hearts rose into our throats in unison. Our big oak was on both our minds. We glanced at each other, trying to mentally and emotionally prepare for the inevitable as a huge bolt of lightning arced across the sky to the ground-shaking artillery report of thunder. We counted the blocks and noted the tree detritus as we lumbered homeward.
Fortunately, by some incredible miracle, our big tree was still standing—leaning as usual—and other than a few branches, everything seemed okay. When we got inside, we noticed that the power was out. Then my heart really sank. Few things are as frustrating as a power outage. One of the benefits of not living in the wilder parts of the county, is that we have a very trusty and sturdy electrical infrastructure. The power goes out regularly, but Duke Power has worked diligently over the years to make a self-healing power supply system. In recent years, even if the power goes out, it is only usually for short periods. We’ve been fairly lucky and generally, the situation has improved since we moved here.
However, after Saturday's massive, mainly red and yellow blob on the radar went shrieking past, thousands in Asheboro had to go without power. We were among them. The power died at 3:06 (based on our devices, not on the data sent by the power company) and didn't come back on until 7:49 a.m. Sunday morning. When we got home, we jammed our coolers with ice packs and waited until all the thunder had departed before putting things away more thoroughly. We played UNO on our screened-in porch with Jess, who had been hunkering downstairs, until Elliott got home from work. Then we went for supper and more shopping for more Halloween stuff, hoping to stumble back home to lights and power. Sadly, our hopes were dashed.
Dejectedly, we went back to the screened-in porch to play a couple hands of Yahtzee by faux lantern light, before finally turning in. Our bedroom was silent; no fan, no music, no TV. Micki kept the lantern on low and covered it a bit, so we could see if we needed the bathroom, but otherwise, we lay there, until sleep slowly crept over us.
My own sleep was fitful. It was too quiet. It was much too warm. The day had been too stressful. My ears were continuously pricked for the sound of big trucks and the roar of chainsaws. I was also listening for the telltale digital chimes of juice reaching all our devices. I fell asleep, eventually, and woke several times, having dreamed the power came back on only to wake to disappointment. Eventually, Micki rose and asked if we could open a window for a little breeze, or go back to the screened-in porch. I opted for the porch. We were sitting quietly. I was still intensely groggy and grumpy. I went back inside to get a drink of water and use the bathroom and try to start the kettle (dang it!) and try to wake up to face a long day without power. I‘m not melancholizing at all. It was stuffy, hot and humid in the house and what I really needed was a steaming cup of tea and another hour to consider life before attempting anything as daunting as facing a full day without power.
Our en-suite bathroom has no windows. With the door closed and no lights, it is pitch black in there. My eyes kept darting toward our blue digital clock, to no avail. I cursed my stupid habits and washed my hands. Then I glanced at the clock again. It took my brain a minute to define the blinking 12:00 I saw there. Then it finally went in. By all the grace of the gods of electricity, old and new, the power had been restored! I leaped like a young gazelle back to the screened-in porch, where I gave Micki a meaningful look and then glanced meaningfully at the ceiling fan. She looked back at me questioningly and I repeated the move. She looked at me meaningfully, not understanding what I wished to convey. I glanced back up at the ceiling fan meaningfully. It was a big morning for meaningful looks. She glanced up to see the fan gaining speed. And, like for me a few minutes before, the lights came on, both literally and figuratively. She whooped with joy and we went in to enjoy the rooms and passages of our home as the HVAC system brought things back to a more modern temperature.
All together, we were without power for about 16 hours. As I drafted this over the long holiday weekend, some people were still without power. Several very large, very heavy, very old trees came down hard on the power lines and, until just a day ago, left upwards of 5 thousand residents bitter and too warm for much comfort. We both got cooling showers and went for breakfast and then I headed back to Greensboro to return the meats we’d bought the day before that had been lost to temperature and buy fresh. Micki spent that time emptying and cleaning our fridge and freezers of everything. When I got home, we stored the new foodstuffs and then went shopping to get fridge staples, like hotsauce, ketchup, mustard and milk and cheese. By the time we got home and repacked everything, we were both exhausted and opted to have baked potatoes for dinner. I had to run back out for sour cream and salsa.
All this got me thinking about how lucky we actually have been to this point. Yes, I had been making rather heavy weather both about having to endure the agonies of no power for not even a full day and for how slowly the power company had been to complete their repairs. We’d been without power less time than many people nearby, who were still enduring the lack of lightning juice in their walls. Why was I complaining? Why was I being such a baby?
For thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands, humans walked, crawled, ate, slept, made small humans and died dealing solely with whatever air was around them in their yurts or hovels, caves or teepees or wigwams. They could make things a bit warmer, certainly, but not cooler. The steamier the air, the more the agony of our forebears increased. People who lived in the desert had no way to stay cool. They endured arid temperatures that dried them out and made water a precious currency. Anyone near the equator would find themselves with frizzy hair and drippy, fungusy toes. More recently, but no less comfortable, many of our ancestors decided that they would like to dress up for the Revolution or the Civil War in far too many layers of wool and felt and go out and fight in hot, humid fields of the American South with no reprieve in sight.
Air conditioning, the amenity that I miss more than anything when the power winks out, is newer still and has its inception in the 20th Century. It has only really become ubiquitous in the last sixty or so years and is still not to be found everywhere. Places in New England or the Pacific Northwest don’t have A/C at all, and if you want it, you have to rent one to load into your windows. In the Schaefferstown house, we endured balmy Southeast PA summers with nothing more than the hopes that the cold, limestone walls retained even the slightest chill from the long and dark winter previous. That was hopeless. If anything, it was a nightmare of 18th Century proportions and I remember cursing whoever invented the weakly puffing table fan in my room for its sour breath of stale wind. If we lost power in that house, things went on as usual, because power had only come to it within a very short century.
If I think hard, it is probably my experiences in that house (once again) that have cemented in me such a distaste for a lack of power. I don’t like being hot and I have spent a lot of my life associating being inside during the deadly heat of summer with relief from such things. The irony is that the earth is getting hotter. This past summer was the hottest on record. Ever. That’s been the case for the last thirty summers. Meaning that (dare I age myself) since I graduated high school, the earth has increased by at least one degree to the temps we are seeing now. It’s only going to continue. With the heat comes more erratic weather. The more whooshy the wind and rain get, the more likely the power will go out in our neighborhood. Winter will not leave much room for easy breathing, because, sadly, El Nino in the mid-Pacific will likely cause a pretty moist and chilly winter for us and we’re right at the line where just a few degrees can mean the difference between a few inches of snow and a load of tree-breaking ice. The latter almost always means power outages.
So, we got lucky, all told. A bit of a long and daunting Saturday where we had hoped and longed for an easier, relaxing weekend, but otherwise, we were fortunate. A coworker said that she hoped a branch would dent her roof, so that the insurance company would take care of replacing the whole thing. We, too, need a roof redux but we won’t be quite that lucky, I’m afraid, which is probably a good thing. In the meantime, I’m thinking we’re going to have to adapt our thinking and possibly our home to expect more power loss and also, probably work to connect an alternate and temporary source of power so we can keep the fridge running and the water hot. I’ve already started shopping for generators.
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