About 7 o'clock last night, Jim was watching a movie and I sat down with the laptop to finish Monday's post when all of a sudden everything went black...and an unearthly quiet fell around our house. The electricity was out. This has become a somewhat common occurrence since moving to the country. If anyone hits a light pole within 20 miles, we lose electricity for an hour or so. Sometimes we find out why it went out...and sometimes we never know. After the obligatory checking of fuse boxes, Jim went out to the pole and found that the green light was not on (I was informed that this means there is no power at the meter box.) It was bitterly cold last night, so Jim sat to work stoking the fire to make sure that we would stay warm until power returned.
The kids came in about 15 minutes later and consumed all the leftovers that Jim and I had just taken out of the oven before we lost power. They decided to go outside and shoot the last of the fireworks that were left over from New Years Eve. We decided to go on to bed and be thankful for an opportunity to get a little extra sleep. At about 1 o'clock this morning, I woke up and could tell that we still did not have electricity. It was beginning to get cold in the house. I was getting out of bed when Jim woke up and mentioned that it was not like our power company to not have the lights on by now. He asked, "Are you sure we weren't the only one without power?" Now, just for the record...I distinctly remember asking him that very question about five minutes after the power went out because I could see lights at the far end of the "subdivision" and across the street.
I use the term "subdivision" very lightly. In essence, we live on what was once a very large plot of timber land. At some point someone decided to put in four or five streets, divide the property into 5 acre lots and sell them off as home sites. Let me describe the view from our lot: To the North we have a neighbor who has left at least the edges of his property totally natural. You can hear him working over there, but you cannot see his house from any side of the property. To the West the neighbors placed their home just off the road and left the back four acres totally natural (which is the side that borders our property). To the South there are two lots that are cleared with only a few trees here and there, but they are inhabited by sheep and goats, no homes. To the East (across the road) are two lots that are totally untouched, other than a fence around the perimeter...no livestock, no barn, just timber. Even though we have neighbors within a relatively short distance, we can't actually see them.
All of this to say, that at 1:30 this morning...when it was 24 degrees outside and with ice on my windshield, I got in the truck, rode down the street and realized that all my neighbors had porch lights on. They were snug as bugs in a rug...while we were without power. I called the electric co-op and reported our outage...6 hours later! Jim and I both decided to stay up. He built another fire while I did some picking up of the things the kids had left out in the kitchen (we were sharing a flashlight!) Bless the sweet hearts of the San Bernard Electric Co-operative...they were driving up the street within 30 minutes of my call and they had it fixed within an hour. We had a 'pod' go out and trip the meter at the pole. I don't know what that means...but the end result was that they replaced it and we had power once again. Since Jim and I had missed out on supper, he made us breakfast. We figured that we might get one meal before the vultures swooped in again. It was not to be...it seems that the smell of bacon will wake William from even a deep sleep! We enjoyed a hot breakfast, finished a load of laundry, started the dishwasher and went back to bed.
As we crawled back between the nice warm covers of the bed, I looked at him and said, "Rural Living, Lesson #2: Never assume that you are not the only one without power!" You learn something new every day!
2 comments:
Since you lived out in the country as a child you should have already learned that lesson. Lesson #2--Never ask a man a question that requires him having to do something that you depend on for sleeping, eating, or comfort(heating or cooling). If you think it needs to be done then it probably does need to be done and they only way it will be done is to just do it yourself.
R
Don't feel too bad. That happened to me once too. Only it was summer and we were have 100 degree weather. You can imagine how that was. I thought someone else would call it in, but come to find out, we were the only one's without power. It turned out that a breaker in the main box had a meltdown. Now I always call.
D.
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