It rained last night. And I don't just mean it rained, I mean it rained, rained hard. Cats & dogs one might say. It was a regular cacophony of thunder and lightening and rain hitting the roof and windows so hard it almost sounded like the house was being bombarded with tiny little pieces of gravel.
The, the almost unthinkable happened. Something that has so rarely happened in the 7 years we've been in our house, it was nigh unfathomable. The power went out. Completely. Not just a little, but all of it. Across the street, in perfect Topeka fashion, they retained their power. Usually it is the other way around. The folks on the eastern side of the street lose their power, while our side maintains theirs.
My first thought, of course, was that we had to finish drinking what coffee had been made before it went cold because, well, I didn't want to heat a cup of coffee with a candle. The migration from beautiful, electric powered light to flashlights and candles was pretty smooth. The batteries mostly still worked, and which flash light batteries didn't work, we had spares.
So, we headed out to the front porch. We recently bought a table and chairs to put on the front porch. We put them there with the intention of being able to sit around the table and do whatever people do when sitting around a table on their front porch. I don't have much experience with that, so I don't really know. We'd bought the set a couple of weeks go, and it has sat dutifully on our front porch all that time just waiting to be used. So we sat and listened to the rain fall, and watched the lightening flash. And yelled cautioned the kids that since we really didn't need the flashlights right here, right now, they would be best to leave them off lest they run down their batteries and then, later, could not find their way to the bathroom in the dark.
I looked out across the street. I could see their lights on over there. The blue glow that can only come from a television. Their porch lights slicing through the wet darkness. All that light and electricity...glaring towards my house, which was dark, and powerless...mocking me. Now I knew. I knew what it felt like to be on 'that' side of the street. The one without power. The one which has been, in an instant, transported to time and space back to the dark ages. Well, maybe the late 19th century anyway (which was pretty dark at night, not being any electricity and all).
None of the other neighbors were out on their porches which, quite frankly, surprised me. I had fully expected them to be out. Better to sit outside in the darkness, than inside in the darkness. At least that is my point of view. We would watch the cars come roaring down the street. I keep threatening to make a giant sign and nail it to the tree near the curb. I'd make the background of the sign bright yellow. And in big black block letters, I would write "SLOW DOWN". Our street is wide. About three and a half lanes wide. Back in the day, the trolley went down our street, to the college. So even with cars parked on both sides, there is plenty of room for two cars and a motorcycle to fit across the street comfortably. All this with a 6 block stretch and no traffic control. No yield signs. No stop signs. So people tend to drive fast down our street. It is currently being restored to a brick surface. We're all hoping it has a traffic calming effect.
The cars would come barreling down the street, and slow quickly before continuing on. No. 1 Son noticed a car had stopped about 1/2 down our block, and somebody was out of the car and walking around. I went to the curb, the rain was dying down now, not much more than a light drizzle at this point, and looked. I saw two flares in the road in front of a branch. I beckoned the boys to come with me and see if we could move the big branch out of the road so nobody would hit it.
As we walked towards the branch, No. 1 Son said "Dad, I don't think we can move that branch". Indeed, it seemed the branch was grow exponentially as we neared it. Like something from some cheesy Sci-Fi channel movie. In fact, upon inspection, it was not a branch at all, but a tree. It had been hit by lightening and fell right into the street. The police had put some flares around it so people wouldn't hit it. I ran back to the house and got my camera because, with the smoke and the red flare fire, and the lights from the po-po car shining through the tree from the other side, it was all pretty cool looking. I stupidly neglected to get my tripod, so all my pictures had to be flash pictures. It would have been cool to get some extended exposure pictures of that scene.
I'll update with some pictures once I get them off the camera. But since my power was out last night, I couldn't really do it then. And since my work - as generous as they are - gives me a laptop with no card reader, I'll have to wait until I get home tonight before I can get the pictures off the camera.
After a bit, the 5/8 and Little Sister joined us. The the neighbors started trickling out of their houses. We talked about what happened "Did you see it?", "Did you hear it?" "No, but I heard the transformer blow". "Is Doc home?" "No, we don't know where he is." "Is there a car underneath the tree?" "Doesn't look like it". And other chit-chat about the tree, which then migrated to other things. All in all, I'm glad the tree fell. We were able to have some nice conversations with the neighbors. In these days, when it is either 90+ degrees, or raining, the neighbors are not out and about, sitting on their porches and what not, like they are in May or in September so we don't get to see them so much.
The 5/8 was restless though. We ended up going to bed about 9:30 last night. I mean, what the heck else you gonna do? No power. Sure, could mess on the computer for an hour or so before the battery finally declared that enough was enough - but no power = no Internet. And really, what good is a computer if you don't have it plugged in and online? I can play solitaire with real cards. The 5/8 made the comment "what did they do in the old days" to which I replied "sleep".
