The other night, a storm came through and after blinking, we heard a very loud boom and the lights went out! Always guarantees a good time! Our closest neighbors are on a different line so their power stayed on! Just to be sure there was no doubt about their power still being on they had all their outside lights on and most of the inside lights, too! So much fun to be sitting in the dark--and I DO mean DARK--and knowing the neighbors have power to spare! :) Of course, that meant no tv, no computer, no nothing that required electricity!
The cordless phone won't work without power so my son had to dig out the rotary so I could report it. We have one working light and several non-working lights and I remembered seeing batteries and lights at the check-out and thinking I should get some of those! So, I'm holding the phone, trying to make out the phone number and dialing at the same time! The lady at the power co couldn't give me an estimate of how long it would take. Seems there were lots of people in the same boat we were in! That's always good news--NOT! I knew we might be in for a long wait since we were basically by ourselves. We did have a battery operated radio but because they were changing the tvs from analog, we couldn't pick up the tv station on it anymore.
As it got later and we hadn't seen any trucks, repair work seemed to be a long way off! I tried to go to sleep but kept waking up, so around 4 or 5 am I got dressed and went in search of a new battery and a flashlight. I was even thinking about which motel would be a good bet for that night. I had just read about the housekeeper who told all in an article about how sometimes they have to hurry and might only wipe out the sink and just flush the toilet! Yuk! I found a new battery and got a new flashlight (wonder how long we'll have this one?) and went home to try to take a nap.
Still no power, so I proceeded to nap and around 1 pm my son woke me up saying the power repair guys were on our street! It was raining and windy but they got our power on! Yay for the guys who come out in that kind of weather to bring alittle light into your life! We found out later that there were around 100,000 houses without power! We were without for 15 hours but it could've been alot worse!
I know one thing, I was not meant to be a pioneer woman!
Cats Make Everything Better
3 hours ago
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I guess I’m better prepared than most people when the power goes off. Left over from my hunting days years ago I have 3 Coleman gas camping lanterns that really put out a lot of light. I also have 3 small-sized kerosene lanterns that put out enough light to get around by and even read numbers in the phone book. I usually just fire up the kerosene lanterns because they’re easier to get lit and operate.
ReplyDeleteWhat company supplies your power, Alabama Power or and REA company? I’ve found through the years that REA is usually a lot faster to restore power after an outage.
AP--who's REA? We have 2 rechargeable lights that put out enough to light the entire room but we lost the cord to the first one and the second one just decided it didn't want to work anymore. I haven't decided on a 3rd one, yet! I am leary of anything that could cause a fire! Although I do have a fat candle in a glass container to use!
ReplyDeleteREA stands for Rural Electrification Association, which I guess is a fancy name for an electric co-op. Years ago Alabama Power decided to leave much of rural Alabama in the dark because it wasn’t profitable to provide electricity in sparsely populated areas, so electric co-ops were started to do what Alabama Power chose to not do. The co-ops are owned by the members that they provide electrical service to. There are still numerous co-ops across Alabama and one of them provides service where I live.
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