One advantage of living in the country is the peace and quiet. Though it can get pretty noisy in the summer when crickets and bullfrogs and coyotes and owls join in four-part harmony, winter is quiet. Aside from an occasional train whistle carried on the north wind, few noises penetrate the walls of our home in wintertime. Last night as I ventured outside to bring in some firewood, the wind was carrying something else: snow. Snow, though beautiful, is typically not listed in the advantage column when it comes to the pros and cons of country living - ESPECIALLY when it is accompanied by its evil first cousin, freezing rain.
At 7:30 pm Monday
my wife and I were watching TV when our lights went out. Uh oh.
In the 14 years we’ve lived in this home power outages have been common enough
that I have the utility company on speed dial.
Before I could open my contacts and call in the outage the lights came
back on. Whew. Though I like peace and quiet, I do find the
hum of the furnace reassuring. Spurred
by the heads-up we dusted off our trusty power outage lanterns and filled a
bathtub with water. Though not having a
water bill is nice, when the electricity stops in the country, so does the well,
the water faucets AND the toilets. A
bucketful of water will flush a toilet, hence the bathtub full of water. In case of a dire emergency, I still have the
5 gallon plastic bottle of water I bought for Y2K.
The power
went out briefly during the night and the lights have flickered several times
today but they are still glowing brightly as I write. Or at least as brightly as the new humming Chinese lightbulbs mandated by Congress can glow. Meanwhile, the evening news carried reports
of thousands of people still without power in central Missouri. If you are reading this and are without
power, you are welcome to share our light and heat in our extra bedrooms. One catch-22: if you don't have power, the odds of you reading this are slim and the offer hollow. Kind of like the ad I once heard of that said "Illiterate? Write to the address below for free help!"
In her book The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder
recalled the following dialogue between her parents when they ran out of
kerosene:
“If only I
had some grease I could fix some kind of a light," Ma considered. "We
didn't lack for light when I was a girl before this newfangled kerosene was
ever heard of."
"That's so," said Pa. "These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves--they're good things to have, but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.”
Laura died February
10, 1957, three days after her 90th birthday, on her farm in
Mansfield, Missouri.
Nothing like
a good old Missouri winter power outage to make folks realize just how many more
“good things to have” we have come to depend on since Laura’s pa spoke those
words of wisdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment