Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 14, 1994 TAG: 9403150169
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joe Kennedy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We had lived there only a few weeks when we went out of town on a January weekend and came home to find our power off and our water pump frozen and cracked.
A year or two later, a March wind tore off our roof.
Heavy rains have washed out our driveway so often we're thinking about going on the installment plan at the gravel pit.
Hurricane Hugo felled six of our biggest trees.
One beautiful day a few years ago, I noticed a distinct lean to the corn crib. Before I could repair it, a gale force wind blew it over.
The blizzard of '93 knocked out our power and froze our pipes.
When you live in the country, you grow accustomed to these things. You're closer to nature. It's not all brook babble and birdsong.
I bring this up because of the extraordinary weather we've had in recent weeks - the ice storms that showed us how ill-equipped we are to survive without our creature comforts.
As ice storms go, the one in early February was exceptional. At our house it began with five inches of sleet followed by freezing rain and then a crystal fog. The power went out that Friday afternoon at 2 and came back that Sunday night around 7.
The temperatures outside never rose above freezing. Our woodstove was in poor repair. Our children are young, our vehicles ill-equipped for skating along slick rural roads. We had all the ingredients for a weekend to remember.
But we thrived. Not because we'd gotten smart, but because we'd gotten old. Or, to put it another way, because we had lived long enough to distinguish at last between wants and needs, to know how to postpone pleasure and even how to do some things we didn't want to do.
We'd bought a generator.
Generators are no big thing to real country people like our neighbors, who had to have them when they were in the dairy business. But to us, suburbanites who moved to the country on a whim that we've been paying for ever since, a generator was as alien as a milking machine.
We wanted a new computer, one the children could use for their school work, one I could write on at home. We had picked it out. Not only that, we had saved the money to buy it.
Then, common sense moved in.
We remembered the blizzard of last year. We remembered the feeling of helplessness, and the $800 it took to patch the pipes. We remembered that life is full of sacrifices, as our parents tried to tell us so many years ago.
We decided to investigate generators.
With typical efficiency, Sharon found a good, reliable electrician, who came by in November to upgrade our household wiring and install a new box to accommodate such a thing. We were ready.
Then I faltered. Spending money is not my favorite pastime. Spending big money is way down on my list. Spending it for something as prosaic and utilitarian as a gas-powered generator seemed about as appealing as returning to the second grade and having Sister Frances Mary whack me with her ruler.
December arrived: ice, snow and nasty winds. I took the hint, and ordered the generator.
Then I got tonsillitis, and was laid up for two weeks. The winds howled. Ice rattled down from the sky. The generator sat on the loading dock in Roanoke.
We waited for the lights to go out, for the oil burner to quit. But the power lines held.
At the start of the new year, I dutifully wrote out the check - good-bye, Macintosh - and brought the thing home. Two weeks later, our electrician hooked it up and showed me how to use it. He advised me to start it every three weeks. Naturally, I didn't.
Then came the February's first ice storm. We lost power. Suddenly, I was out at the shed, pouring gasoline from a five-gallon can into the gleaming device that would save us, if it didn't kill me first.
Have you ever read the owner's manual to a generator?
It's chock full of weird little symbols that warn, ``If you don't do this exactly right, you'll be toast.'' And ``If you don't do this exactly right, they'll be picking up your body parts in New Castle.'' And ``If you don't do this exactly as described, you'll only get electrocuted - but you'll still die.''
I filled the tank, stood outside in the sleet until the fumes dissipated, and then, with a mighty yank, fired that baby up. Voila! The house lights came on. We had heat. We had TV. We had Nintendo. We had no hot water - you need a huge generator for that - but life was almost normal.
The motor roared. It sounded like Mozart to me.
Our power stayed off for 53 hours in that first storm and 27 in the second. We ran that sucker up to nine hours at a time, with two-hour rests in-between. My clothes reeked of gasoline. Worry kept me awake. But it beat living for days in the dark and the cold, as thousands of others had to do.
The computer? It can wait. We're still savoring yet another discovery of middle-aged life: how good it feels to have done something dull, but right.
by CNB