June 30, 2005
Yesterday the power went out for seven hours, and it was really great.
No, I mean it, it was really great. Let me further explain.
We had a severe thunderstorm blow through here around 4 in the afternoon, after which the lights in the house promptly went off. Losing the power during a thunderstorm is not terribly rare around here, but usually it comes back on after a brief pause. Yesterday, not. We waited, and waited, and waited, and after half an hour finally decided that it was probably time to report the outage to the power company. So I called up the handy-dandy automated power outage reporting line and gave them our information. Then half an hour after that, because I am impatient and have no tolerance for suspense (Will the lights come on now? How about now? Are they going to come on.... now? Now! Now! How about.... now?!), I called the power company back and got a human being on the line who informed me that the estimated repair time was currently listed as 1 AM.
Hm. Well, I guess that rules out surfing the Internet, working on indexing, or watching my CSI DVD, I thought to myself. The kids and Keith fell asleep around 8:30, which left me at loose ends. What did I used to do before the Internet, I wondered. Books! I'll read a book! Brilliant!
So I threw the Terry Pratchett novel I just got from the library into my backpack and set off on foot for the local UDF convenience store, on the theory that it would have power, and therefore lights and air conditioning, and I could sit there (the ice cream parlor section of UDF has seating) and read my book and sip my diet Coke and enjoy the A/C until the power came back on at home or I got tired, whichever came first.
On the way to UDF, I noticed first that a lot more houses were without power than the power company lady had told me on the phone, and also that a lot of traffic lights appeared to be out. Second, I noticed that everyone was on their front porch. I mean, everyone. I would estimate that about 90% of the houses I walked past had people sitting on the front porch. Talking, BBQing, drinking, telling jokes, setting off miniature fireworks, reading books, fanning themselves.... whatever. Didn't matter, they were out on their porches. What else are you going to do when your fans and air conditioning aren't working and your house is getting dark?
It turned out that UDF didn't have power, either. An employee had helpfully left a handwritten sign on the door: "CLOSED DUE TO POWER FREE WORKPLACE." I briefly considered walking further up the street to another UDF, but the lack of traffic lights made crossing the street on foot a tricky proposition at best. So I rounded the corner and headed back for home.
I got back to my front porch after having several shouted conversations with people about when the power was supposed to be back on -- I, having actually spoken with a power company representative, was a coveted font of information -- and parked myself in a patio chair with a Diet Coke (hurriedly snatched from the fridge, against my better judgement, as generally during a power outage we leave the fridge closed to avoid spoilage inside).
You could hear people talking everywhere. There were kids playing, conversations going on, fireworks being shot off... it was noisy, but just with the sounds of people being people. No loud TV sets, no blaring stereos. Just neighbors talking to neighbors, and the occasional M-80 being tossed into the street. (It's just that kind of neighborhood.)
After awhile, the lady who owns the house next door to ours called over to me and asked what I was reading. "Oh, some Terry Pratchett novel," I said dismissively. I hate explaining to people what I'm reading, especially when it's a fantasy novel. I think this is a leftover tic from junior high and high school. But, my neighbor surprised me, and said, "Oh, a friend of mine told me about a book written by the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy guy... I think it's called Good Omens? She said it was really funny."
She could not have reeled me in more effectively had I been a trout snagged on her line. "Well, actually..." I began, and then explained that Douglas Adams was the Hitchhiker's Guide guy, whereas Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman co-authored Good Omens, which was in fact a hilarious book, and one I would recommend to anybody...
And so we sat on our porches and talked for an hour or so. I thanked her for the Halloween gifts she gave to the kids last year; she told us stories about the grad students with the pool table who used to live in the other side of our duplex. It was nice. I like knowing who my neighbors are. I like talking with them.
After we said our goodbyes and I went back to my novel, which I was now reading with the assistance of a flashlight, old Mrs. Fenton from across the street stumped her way over to say hi also. She and her husband introduced themselves the week we moved in. They seem to be genuinely nice people, although she did give me this weird fundamentalist pamphlet back around the time of the election. And she always seems to be watching the street from around the corner of her living room curtains.
But as I said, she seems to be genuinely nice, and she came over (at 10:30 PM!) to chat and ask what I was doing out so late, and so forth. I pointed out our pumpkin vine to her, and Zeke's sunflowers, and she told me how she and her husband have lived in the same house since 1954 (!) and then just as I think she was about to leave anyway... the lights came back on.
A cheer erupted from half the houses on our block, and the college girls next door celebrated by cranking their stereo up full blast, although thankfully this was short-lived. And then Mrs. Fenton said good night and stumped back across the street, and I picked up my novel and Diet Coke and retreated into the house to check my email and surf my usual websites. The neighborhood settled into semi-quiet again.
But for a few hours, it was really quite pleasant. I think I'll miss this neighborhood when we go.
Posted at June 30, 2005 9:30 PM