19 February 2007
L-L-I
The sun had just set somewhere in the grayness to the west, but the dregs of the light still reflected off the sheets of ice on the yards and rooftops of Arlington Forest. I was pretty well set for dinner, which is more of an effort than I would normally make. My older son had flown back from the Mid-west where he had taken a sports-break on the long weekend and he was disoriented and hungry.
I had a nice salad for him, Greek style, with crumbled Feta cheese and fat black olives and savory artichoke hearts in oil. There was a savory stew with an odor that wafted through the apartment, and potatoes and biscuits.
I had the latter out on the counter, still in the can from the daily case, since that would be the last to go in the little toaster over after he arrived. I was looking out over the parking lot, contemplating the nature of cold, when the power abruptly failed around 5:40 local. I heard the alarms beeping in the office as all three computers failed simultaneously, their operating systems losing data and going to emergency shut-down mode.
The power flickered once, just a goose to the tiny electronics devices, and then failed again. Some automatic router had shifted paths on the river of electricity, fried another relay, and died.
It was living like Iraqis do all the time, I thought, or at least eighteen or twenty hours a day. No elevators. No heat or cooling in the boxy buildings designed for forced air. Just stifling silence, punctuated by explosions in the distance.
There were no explosions near Big Pink, or at least none I could hear, and I rolled the phrase over in my mind. “Living Like Iraqis.” It would make an acronym, which I would do, if I still worked for the government. “L-L-I.”
I lit candles, since I had plenty I purchased after 9/11, and realized I needed to refresh the batteries that have waited in the junk drawer since we lost power for two days last summer. I remembered how miserable that had been, and decided it was better to lose power in the winter, since I could always retreat to bed and huddle under the down quilt.
But of course the heat wouldn't kill you, nor would a trip to the outdoor market to get food or candles or batteries like it does in Iraq.
I and continued to cook in the dark (gas no electricity). My son fumbled his way up the stairs, lit only by the emergency lighting from the big battery in the basement. He was sick, hoarse from yelling and I suspected a little hung-over. He was on the ragged edge after a Big-10 Basketball and Hockey doubleheader I Michigan.
Looking out over the parking lot to the Church of Gad and the Assisted Living Facility, I could see that this was not a Big Pink problem; it was universal. The whole neighborhood was sailing into the chill darkness without lights. That was a good thing. If it was just our building it might mean something large and expensive had failed again, and it would be days or more before it was fixed.
We dined with candlelight, and it was novel, though not romantic. I listened to him cough through the salad course and into the stew as I fiddled with the tinny sound of the transistor radio. This model gets the television station bands, sort of, once I had inserted a new set of batteries, but he was not as interested as I was in finding out what the prospects were for power restoration. Was it some idiot out chipping at the ice, and hitting a po0wer line? Some greater failure that made the entire power grid go out.
Instead, he recommended a new station, FM 94.5, that has some good music. It was the tuneful stuff of the last ten years, new by my standards. I'm sure he considers it "light" pop, but I could recognize most of it and it seemed like a better compromise than the classical station.
There were not biscuits, since that would have required finding the pilot light for the oven, and I did the potatoes and green beans on the back burners as I heated the soup, fumbling with the controls.
After he was fed and ransacked the medicine cabinet for likely remedies by flashlight, I sent him on his way. I cleaned up as best I could (no disposal, but water) and stacked the dishes and silverware next to the sink. Then I turned off the flashlights and blew out most of the candles.
Candles and gas are great things, if you don't knock one over or leave the gas on and blow the contents of the apartment out over the swimming pool. I perched a candle next to the brown chair and held a book up to see if there were enough lumens to comprehend what was on the page, but there was not. I put the book down and listened to the little radio and the sound of the wind beating on the side of the building and watched the flickering of the warm golden light.
The predictable happened. Somewhere a team of hardy men in thick thermal coveralls had arrived at the scene of the outage, and dealt with it. As I dozed the lights came back on. I did not hear the beeping of the computers protesting that they had not been put to sleep correctly, and thankfully the television was not on. It was just me and the dog in the pool of light from the torchierre. He was looking up expectantly.
I blew out the candle and glanced at the cable box, which always has the accurate time when there is power. It told me it was ten-thirty, and time to take the dog out. The tinny voices on the radio said it is going to get warm again this week, an air mass out of Texas coming to visit, and that will defeat all this ice.
You couldn't have proved it in the wind last night. Even the dog did not want to go all around the flank of Big Pink.
He peed, pooped, scratched once and looked up at me expectantly for a dog treat.
If he was not signed up for a walk, it certainly was not my place to drag him around. I managed to fool him into re-entering the building by a side entrance, took the elevator up (Praise be to elec-tri-city!), did the dishes and went to bed.
I knew the dog was going to be at the bedside, ready to go out again shortly. I know how people live without power. It is not that complicated, but it certainly is different than the soft life we are used to.
It is no wonder that the people overseas are so irritable.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com