Wednesday, January 30, 2008

What the...?

Left work at midnight and drove home via Church Street. Piece of cake. I do it five nights a week.

Got lucky and made it past all the lights, even at Hoffman Street. Then my headlights seemed really dim and my muffler got annoyingly noisy. Feeling guilty, I looked around for a police cruiser.

That's when I noticed that there were no lights at all in Elmira Westside, and all the way down Church Street through the Town of West Elmira!

None. We were in a blackout, from Hoffman Street west towards Corning. Corning also experienced a blackout later on. Rumor has it a transformer blew. The paper never knew.

Up Guinnip to First Street and our little Friendly House, right there in Little Pond. No lights. I got out of the car.

No sound at first, although later I was able to detect water dripping into the sewer. At that point I also could see light on at one house, way up. No doubt some people were firing up their backup generators. Once inside, I worked my way towards our Black and Decker Storm Station.

By the auxillary room light, I made myself a Bailey's and milk, turned on the gas fireplace, got undressed and went to bed.

The power was restored shortly after I hit the sheets. Back downstairs, turn off the fireplace, return the flashlight to the Storm Station, back up stairs once again.

Another night in Little Pond.

pb
Little Pond

2 comments:

mdmhvonpa said...

Nothing like a reminder that even though we loose the benefits of modern conveniences, we can still get on with life.

BRAINCHEESE said...

Eerie when that happens...as if the world (as we know it, draining resources and energy into "lights") suddenly goes dark and still. I think it's quite peaceful...until I hear a "thump" in the night!

Linda D. in Seattle