by Denise Dykstra
I wrote a column for Townbroadcast, sent it off with the note “I’ll have more soon!” and basically jinxed myself.
Tuesday night my 17-year-old son, 15-year-old son and I were outside watching the storm roll in. It was dramatically cooler outside than in our non air conditioned home even with the fans on. As we headed in when the storm was upon us, I commented on how unbearable it would be if the power went out. Laying in our beds, fans blowing on high, we heard a loud POP and then total darkness.
The next morning my husband rigged up his coffee pot to the generator and had a pot brewing in no time. My husband calls me a coffee snob so I was thankful I still could light a burner and make some French press even without power.
Also, it is just magical to live in town and still have water. When we lived out at the farmhouse, I would fill every bucket and pitcher I could find when we thought we might lose power to use for drinking and flushing toilets. But in town? All the water works all the time.
My husband hooked up the fridge and deep freezer to the generator, kissed me goodbye and headed off for a long haul in his semi truck that would keep him away from home that night. No worries, I had told him, according to when I turned in the outage they had said the power would be back by 2 that afternoon.
That first day it wasn’t bad. We felt like the air was cooler. We had everything we needed. All the generators running at all the houses sounded like a tractor show, my youngest said cheerily.
What was errie is that our phones didn’t work. As in, not at all. The tower had been hit, we heard, and for nearly a full day we could not get phone calls or use our phones for anything other than taking some pictures. The no phone service was so weird. Yet, oddly very peaceful.
That first day of no power, I walked by my little fountain that was not running and saw my two fish swimming on their sides. I figured they were not getting enough air without the pump and so I quickly ran into the kitchen and grabbed a spatula.
“What are you doing?” my son asked quizzically.
“I have to stir my fish!” I flew my answer back.
They were pretty sure I had gone crazy. I took my good spatula and stirred the water until it was like a little whirlpool and all throughout the day I would holler to anyone walking into the house “Hey! Stir my fish!”
We had some good laughs over all we were dealing with. The camaraderie of our neighbors all out together cleaning up some slight storm damage, as we all lamented not having power, even seemed lighthearted. When we did get some spotty phone service back, we were shocked to see our return of electric date was now Friday night.
That night it got dark faster than we thought it was going to and we couldn’t see in the house to make dinner, the generator was so loud we couldn’t have a conversation outside where it was cooler and then we found out there was another storm coming in. We felt low. We propped a flashlight so it was pointing at the ceiling and we reclined on the couches, sweating even though we had taken our showers already.
“I wish we could watch a movie,” my 15-year-old sighed sadly. But we couldn’t so we sat around and chatted about our day as best we could while fighting the low feeling we all felt.
I laid in bed that night, feeling like I was suffocating in the heat. I could not see anything. I put my hand in front of my face and couldn’t see it, until the lightning lit up the sky and then there was my hand in front of my face. Even though I knew it was my own hand, it still scared me like some terrible horror movie I had managed to find myself in.
Not one of us slept well through the hot night and the second booming storm. We woke up cranky and tired. I had not realized that not only do I require good coffee in the morning, I also require ice cold water and with our water cooler not working I didn’t have fresh ice cold water. I had to use a candle to even see my tea kettle to know if it was steaming to make my coffee. We also made the discovery that we had had laundry in the washer when the power went out and now it was smelling bad so we headed to my parents to use their washer.
“Remember when we thought we could be pioneers?” my son asked me. “Pretty sure we would die.”
My husband called (now that we had phone service, although spotty) to tell me how great he slept in his air conditioned semi and how he just had to press a button to have his coffee made. I admit it, I secretly wished phone service was still out so he wouldn’t have to tell me things like that.
(Did my mom fold all our laundry? Yes. Yes, she did.)
When we arrived home from my parent’s magical home where the air conditioning was cold and all the things worked, was a fleet of electric trucks in front of our house. I have never been so happy to see a traffic jam. The crew was from Missouri, called up to help us Michiganders. They had southern drawls, said a polite “yes, ma’am” and had big grins even though it was near 90 and they had sweat dripping off of them. The crew went to work fixing the electric pole that was snapped in half. From the moment they arrived until the time they left it was just a few hours and I could have hugged every single one of them. FANS! LIGHTS! NO LOUD GENERATOR!
Electricity is a lovely thing. My husband arrived home in time for the power to be fully back on.
The only thing I missed was stirring my fish. It was fun watching them swim up to me when I stirred the water. I watched as the two fish swam up to eat some fish flakes and my youngest son draped his arm around my shoulders. “I hate to break this to you, Ma, but I don’t think that stirring the fish thing did anything. I mean, they are little fish and this is a big tub of water for them. And if you needed to really give them air, you could have just added water. That stirring didn’t really do anything, but it made you happy so I let you go with it.”
I was silent for a moment. I looked down at the spatula that was still beside my water fountain.
“All I know for sure is that the fish were swimming sideways and not moving much but I stirred that water and now they are fine so just let me believe I saved these 25 cent fishes’ lives.”
“Well, we don’t have to stir them any more,” he said cheerily, “I’m off to my cave of a room with three fans blowing on me and a movie playing on my TV. Been nice chatting with you.” And then he was gone and I knew it would take a good deal of hollering for him to hear me over all that when dinner was done.
Maybe the power going out hadn’t been so bad.
What were some of the funny moments that you found yourself in during this power outage?