Originally typed Monday, February 2, 2009
Before I get into reading anything to taint my perceptions, I want to get a few things down.
The guys from the power company did a great job. Our power went off about 11:30 pm on Tuesday night, January 27. A tree across the road fell from the accumulated weight of the snow and ice. About 1:30 am, a state salt truck came by and stopped, apparently radioed for help and a while later a state pickup truck appeared. Together the guys got the road cleared, but left a large part of the tree overhanging the road, suspended by the cable tv wire.
On Wednesday afternoon, after noticing APCO trucks going all over the place, up and down the road, but never slowing or looking at our area, my wife made a sign and I placed it out at the end of our road. The sign as reproduced by the Herald-Dispatch on Thursday, and, voila, on Friday the trucks and men suddenly appeared and we got our power back at about 6:00 pm Friday. I guess it pays to advertise--thanks, Jim and your paper, for publicizing how our area was left out of the grand scheme when repairs were being made. We gad been told originally that it would be at least Sunday or possibly some time this week to get the power back.
The telephone company says it will be Wednesday before they restore service to our line. Another tree dropped on that line and took it out , as well as the line for two neighbor women that live in the head of the hollow. But yesterday, Sunday, the phone company showed up, looking for those ladies, to repair their telephone service. My wife told them that they lived all the way up the hollow, about a quarter-mile. The repairman went up on the road, picked up the broken wires, looked all around, apparently trying to figure out how to access the pole; gave up, turned around , got into his truck and disappeared. Must hae been too much ice and snow for him to navigate. So we are still without telephone service.
He came while I was at the store and post office. On the way I called Comcast from the public phone at the nearby (yeah, two and a half miles is nearby?) convenience store down on Alt. 10. The person who answered the phone at Comcast was very nice, promising that someone would be at the house on Monday (today) between 1 and 5 pm. After I had gotten home, I went outside to take a few pictures and a Comcast truck pulled into the driveway. He asked if I wanted to watch the game this afternoon and I said sure, if he could get it working. He replied that I would have service within fifteen minutes. He said that he and his crew had seen the problem last night but had been unable to stop then and decided to come back and fix it the next day (Sunday). And sure enough, within ten minutes I had cable service again and the crew even came back to the house and made sure it was working properly.
So, now we are down to telephone service only. And maybe he will be back today--I can dream can't I? Anyway I have to hand it to the service guys. They did a hell of a job in extremely trying conditions. As a for instance, if you remember, Friday was the day of the six inch snowfall, on top af the original snow and the later ice fall, and the power guys worked right through it from 12:45 pm until 5:15 pm at our location. Hell, I couldn't have done that even in my younger days
So here's to the service personnel of the area, and those imported to help. Guys, you did a great job. And I for one am thankful for your hard work and dedication during such bitterly cold weather. God bless each and every one of you. I know the pay is good--but it is a pittance for what you do. I know. It isn't easy or fun trying to survive i an eight room house that has only one source of heat (a fireplace, woodburning) in only one room and that room at the very back of the house and is unable to provide heat into the balance of the house without fans which take electricity which we aint got because the power is off. We survived. We kept the water from freezing, but there were times we could see our breath whenever we got out of the bedroom with the fireplace. With the best readings we could get, our thermometer showed about 36 to 40 degrees in the rest of the house and 55 to 65 in the bedroom. SO if you need to know about cold for 3 or 4 days running, just ask me.
But the cold we suffered was not like what you guys went through. And I thank you. And fervently hope that your next emergency jobs are somewhere where the temperature is a bit less formidable, where the sun is warm upon your back as you go up in that bucket or as you walk the lines to uncoil them.
And I do want to thank the Herald Dispatch for running the story and the picture of our sign. No, we are not quoted in the story, no, our name is not mentioned, except as 'frustrated neighbors.' But that is my house in the background of both those pictures--with that nice southern honey-colored pine log siding (which you cannot tell in the photos. I think the sign just noted the frustration we felt, many of us felt, as we kept wondering (as we had no telephone to call) when our service would be restored. We knew nothing of the prioritizations that were being made daily, hourly for those repairs. All we knew was that it was getting colder and colder and other people were getting their service restored and we were not. Hell, we couldn't even get them to remove the damned wires so we could get in and out of the road. The mindset of such people sometimes gets a little ugly on occasion. Maybe publishing the picture of the sign helped. I like to think it did.
So I am now ready to resume being my old irascible self. I'll be looking in on various blogs and forums, making comments, sneering on occasion, laughing on more occasions, and just being glad that, maybe, just maybe, life may return to some semblance of normality. Be prepared for anything.
I must not forget to say one thing here. It has been a great relief not to hear or read anything about politics during this little hiatus. And not thinking about it either. Politics doesn't raise the actual temperature of a cold room one degree. Perhaps it is a sign that we lie in this great country. Maybe we need to learn to just ignore what may be going on outside our immediate purview for a short while, sort of take a vacation from the silliness, and know that the country will continue to move on without our input for a while. Sort of takes all the self-centeredness out of us to know that the world will survive without us. I will begin getting my newspapers and magazines, watching a few random news shows and so on, just sort of catching up, which just happens to be the title of this note. Aint that sweet, how that worked out? Just like it was planned, huh?
UPDATE: Monday, February 9, 2009--
On Wednesday morning, January 28, 2009, my wife and I walked up the hollow to see if the two women who live there were ok, if they had food, heat, fuel, whether the phone was working (no) and to remind them know to call on us if anything was needed. On the way back, we stopped at the guy's house who lives between us and them to see how he was situated--no power, but did have heat, food and telephone service. We came on back to the house and stoked up the fireplace, tired but glad we had made the trip.
Our telephone service reconnects became a comedy if you like. My wife calls them from work on Friday, January 30--they say they will be here Wednesday, February 4. They show up Sunday February 1 and don't do anything. Wife calls again Monday, February 2, and is told absolutely, Wednesday February 4. On February 4, wife receives call at work saying there was a 'technical difficulty' and it would be Thursday February 5. Having dealt with bureaucracy before, I gave her the number of the Public Service Commission, that evening to use for her calls on Thursday. She tried to call our house, of course no answer as we weren't reconnected yet, she calls PSC, then calls Verizon and tells them she has called PSC, Verizon responds with a story that they dispatched a technician that morning at 9:30 am to our house--funny, I sat in front of the window all day and failed to see him--and he reported that there was so much damage that they would need to get a utility crew in to remove the trees and brush before any line work could be done, so it was indefinite when service might be restored, but it would be quite some time they were sure. In the meantime, a recorded message had been left at her workplace saying that without fail, the service would be restored on Friday, February 6. It was not.
On Saturday morning, my wife got the idea to walk up the hollow to check on the ladies again, as we had not seen the younger one driving out to work as she usually did. I advised against it, wanting to wait until the following morning, when more of the melt would have taken place, but we got on our coats and shoes and took off. After talking with the older of the two ladies, we were walking back home and my wife slipped and fell, breaking her left ankle.
Now I am a pretty big guy, 230 pounds and about six feet tall, but I am also 66 years old and there was no way that I could carry her the two hundred yards back to the house. I had to leave her there, cold and in extreme pain while I came home and got the four wheel drive truck to go get her. That took me probably ten minutes or so to get to the house (it was really slick and melting) move the car out of the way and get back up the road to where she was. We tried to find something to splint with but couldn't everything was either too rotten or too big. So, on her hands and knees, she crawled the ten or twelve feet to the truck, the eight or ten feet alongside the bank of the creek and I opened the door. Together we got her into the back seat/floor area of the truck and I drove on up to the ladies' house, turned around and drove back out of the hollow.
So, why didn't we drive up there to start with? I have never before, in 28 years of living here, driven up that road, and when we walked up the last time, no one could have driven in or out with all the downed tree limbs and the depth of the snow. At one point a large bush, some thirty feet in length and twenty feet high overhung the road completely and was sagging down to about four feet off the road surface. So, no, I would not have even thought of driving up that road except in case of a real emergency.
After getting back to the house, I gathered all the necessary items and the took off to get her to the hospital . She went right into the ER and after some diagnostics had her ankle reset and splinted. She cannot use crutches, bound to a wheelchair for six to eight weeks minimum.
So, no good deed goes unpunished still seems to be a good motto to live by.
When we finally got her discharged, about 2:30 pm, she got into our daughter's van, as it is much lower than my old truck (hell, it aint old, it is a 2007) and we started home. I got out in front and lo and behold, what do I see when I top the rise just before our road? The damned telephone company has big bucket truck setting in our road and two guys are using chainsaws up on that hill. Had our telephone back on in about an hour after that.
Wonder if the PSC had anything at all to do with that, hmmm?
Anyway my wife will be home with me for the next two or three months anyway. Thank God we have good insurance and a pretty good benefit package where she works--sick pay, vacation, short term and long term disability policies, so it won't be too hard a financial hit. And old Tanstaafl gets to do the washing and drying and vacuuming and cooking and --oh wait, I have been doing that for four years anyway. All I add in this situation is really caring for her, and that is no problem, friends of mine, that is a joy.
Welcome to the real world. I guess that 'some semblance of normality' went a-glimmering, huh? And that 'be prepared for anything' was more truth than poetry this time, huh.
But she and I have pulled in the same traces for almost 43 years now. We are pretty well broken in with the other. Bumps in the road only make the trip more memorable.
