When I awoke the early morning of March 15, I could barely move with all I'd worn to bed. Besides the three pair of pants, shirt, two sweat shirts and three jackets I had pulled over me a sheet, two regular blankets and a sherpa quilt. All this had kept me fairly cozy all night, Now I had to shuck the blankets and get out of bed.
It was dark.
And it was brittle-bitter cold. I used to like the cold and up until a winter ago I did not fear hiking the state parks in sub-freezing weather. I would layer up and be cozy enough even when my exposed beard would be ice-crusted.
Back when my boy was at Scout age, somewhere close to two-and-a-half decades ago now, they took his troop on a campout down in Camp Rodney during November. We cooked out over a fire and did the usual ghost stories and sing-song while the flames flickered. We slept outside among the trees in four man pup tents. Camp Rodney does have cabins, but I guess the leadership considered this a fall outing so tents would do. However, temperatures dropped to a record low and I honestly thought I would freeze to death that night. It did not help me that out of concern for my son I tossed my extra blanket over him leaving me with onlt my sleeping bag.
As a teen, in Scouts, I had traced the Mason-Dixon line in the very dephts of one winter, so cold even the creek rapids and waterfalls had frozen. It was a trip that remains in my memory with great fondness. I took my son on that November outing to enjoy the camping experience as I did as a boy, but perhaps because of the deep freeze, camping never took with him and he soon dropped out of scouting.
I had never again been as cold as that November until this past week. Feeling the cold goes along with growing old, I suppose and having the ALS doesn't help either. Stepping out of that bed last Wednesday morn was a true shock to the system, despite being well dressed. My wife had never even came back to the bedroom. She spent the night huddled on an easy chair swathed in blankets and covered by cats. She had not slept well, but she has had that problem of not being able to sleep anyway. It was only around 4:30.
I did my usual morning cleaning, fed the cats, took out birdseed and the trash. I made another useless attempt of starting the generator. It is frustrating to reach a point in a man's life that he can't put enough oomph into a pull rope to turn a small engine over. It was now a quarter after 5 o'clock. I started keeping an eye next door to see if anyone was outside at Jamie's place. He has a crane repair business and often in the early morning he and/or his men are coming and going to begin their work. There was no one yet this morning.
Since we had ran the generator during the last evening and I had emptied most of my cas can into before it was started, I thought I better go get a refill supply. I wondered how early the nearby Wawa opened. I thought it might already be. I knew the McDonalds across the intersection from it was open 24/7. This early only the pickup window would be serving, but that was all right. I would also pick us up some hot coffee.
When I got to Wawa I saw it was open. Usually in the mornings the pumps and lot are swarming with
cars, but I guess being before six it hadn't reached a crowded state yet. There were sparse cars at the pumps. As I filled my gas can, and then my car tank, it crossed my mind going over to McDonalds was silly. Wawa sold coffee. I went inside and bought two 24 ounce cups full. I also got a couple hot breakfast sandwiches.
We sat and drank our heat. I kept looking out the front window, but still no action next door. Once daylight had come without any movement outside, I walked over and knocked on his door. He answer still in pajamas and robe. He said when he got dressed he would come over. Not long after I heard someone out back. He had sent his son, who is of college age, and this fellow started my machine for me. Where would I be without concerned neighbors?
I called DP&L, but the story hadn't changed. It was still 11:59 that night as the estimated return of power. They hadn't even sent out anyone to the area yet. The house had dropped into the mid forties. The outside wind chill was in the teens. Once the sun was high and shining in our bay window the inside temperatures went up a few degrees, perhaps as high as 47.
We spent most of the day under covers, shivering anyway, and reading, or in my wife's case trying to sleep. Whatelse was there to do? At one point I suggested we go to the movies, at least it would be warm a couple hours. "La La Land" was playing some matenees starting early, but my wife didn't want to do that, nor did she want to go down to the Senior Center. Around the middle of the day she said lets take a ride. We can get heat in the car.
I drove out all the way to West Chester when I realized I left my wallet at home. I was uncomfortible driving with no identification or license, so we drove home. I had considered stopping for lunch somewhere, but we couldn't now because we had no money or credit cards with us. Coming back we noticed some DP&L trucks down at the bottom of Honeywell, a street a couple blocks from us. When we got home I called DP&L again, but no change, just some hope.
It would be a long day. I again considered a hotel, but if the electric was going to be back by midnight or maybe, just maybe, a little sooner than out, why spend the money we really didn't have. We could tough it out until then.
The lady across the street knocked on our door. She had come to make sure we were okay or if we needed anything. This family, who are Black, had just moved in over the past year. I thanked her for thinking of us. My friend, Ron, from two-doors down stopped by as well. He restarted my generator, which we had turned off when we took our ride. He gave me his cell number, suggested if it got tow cold that evening we should come to his place for awhile. he had gotten his own generator working earlier. It was one tied into the house system, but something had been broke on it and it wasn't working. Now it was fixed and he had heat. He checked the gas level in my generator and ended up pouring my extra gas in. I would have to go get a new backup supply.
There is a young White girl who rents the mother-in-law suite in the back of their home. She has been there a couple year even prior to them buying the place from the former and long time owners. She was now across the street, with one of Jamie's workmen, trying to dig her car out of the frozen snow. She has to park on the street, so the plows had kind of buried her wheels. He was trying to use a snow shovel and she was hacking away with one of those brush-scrappers you use on windshields.
I have a heavy duty scrapper, a heavy metal thing. I took that across saying it might work better. I then noticed a DP&L truck down at the end of our street. I handed her the scrapper and walked down, which was not easy because of the frozen snow on parts of the sidewalk. I turned the corner and there were a line of power company vehicles along the curb between my street and the next. I could not see any of the workmen; they were all up in this fence row between yards where the power lones are strung.
I came back up and tried to help the young
woman break the ice imprisoning her despite my condition. Neighbors had been helping me, I could lease try to help a neighbor myself. But then Jamie backed his pickup out, hitched her car to his tow know and he was able to tow her out. He told me then that he and a crew were driving on I-95 to the Navy Yard in Philladelphia earlier. There was a larger truck ahead of him and a frozen sheet of show flew off its roof and smashed out his own truck's windowsheild. Great.
With her car out, I drove again to Wawa and filled up my gas can.
We went out to dinner again, which meant I turned off the generator again. I left it off for the rest of the night. Coming back from dinner I looked down Honeywell and the electric crews were gone and they were gone from the area below our house as well. We came home to a house remaining without power. I was a bit disappointed the trucks were all gone. I had believed they would work through the night to get the power flowing again. I was wrong. Now we waited with anticipation for the evening to pass. It was growing closer and closer to 11:59. At 10:15 I called DP&L once more to see if that time was till in place. It was
I dozed off on the sofa a bit after that. When I awoke it was 12:25 and the house was just as cold and dark as before. Come on, where is the promised power? I called. Now they gave me a new estimated time for restoration. 12:00 noon of March 16, twelve hours away. My wife was crying and saying she couldn't take it, but she had to. I went back to bed and said a prayer, hardly my first.
It was a dark and stormy night...actually it was no such thing. It was very early morning, but it was dark because Daylight Savings Time had gone into effect just the pass Sunday morning and now dawn wouldn't rise until 7 o'clock or later.
The weather was miserable. When I put some food outside for a local wandering cat it seemed to be raining. It was not the ordinary wet stuff, though, it was freezing rain. I went about my normal morning cleaning routine thinking how cozy it was inside and I wouldn't be taking any walk this day.
When sunrise finally rolled out of bed and shown some light on things I saw everything was white. The street, the yards, my driveway was covered, yet still it was somewhat a relief. The snow hadn't reached the cataclysm media weatherpersons had been hyping for several days. It appeared on first glance to be a typical Delaware situation; a couple or so inches deep.
It was still raining.
I made some coffee and after cleaning, sat down at 9:00 to watch some TV and read the paper. At 9:45 I clicked off the telly and went into my office to the computer. I could see clearly now, the rain had stopped, the sky had brightened and the day was peaceful, so I believed. Even so, the less-than expected snow was a disrupter for me. In the last couple of months my constant schedule of doctor visits, medical tests and such appointments had dropped off to almost nil for my wife and I. We were living an almost normal schedule. Even the previous two weeks of Bible Studies had been cancelled leaving a long gap of limited human contact outside the home. In fact, I was feeling a bit out of touch with the world to tell the truth. But this week I did have some events on the calendar that would break up the solitude, and I was looking forward to most of these. My wife had a yearly checkup at her Rheumatologist's on the 14th, a Tuesday, and I had my monthly ALS Support Group meeting that same evening. Wednesday we were to get back to the Bible Studies. Oh, how these made me happy. I really wanted to intermingle with some other human being again, but the snowstorm interfered.
All the forecast over several previous days said the storm was coming on Wednesday night into Thursday morning. This was good for then it would not interfere with those appointments I just mentioned. However, come Sunday there was a sudden shift and it was predicted to come overnight on Monday into Tuesday, and they treated it as if there was an apparent chance we all were doomed. North Delaware, where I dwell, was to be hit with heavy snow along the I-95 corridor. Area schools had already chickened out declaring their closures for Tuesday.
Thus Monday morning I called my wife's doctor and changed her appointment to a later date. Better not take a chance we would not be able to kept it and be charged a heavy fee as no-shows.
By Tuesday morning the evening ALS Meeting was cancelled until next month and even the Wednesday Night Bible Study was called off. It was disappointing, especially since we were not buried in a foot, but perhaps two inches of the stuff. It looked a typical Delaware snow. I fully expected the major hi-ways and byways had already been cleared.
So now I sat at the computer replying to people on Facebook. I was in the middle of a sentence in my status when my screen went blank.
Wha...?
Then I realized it wasn't just the computer; everything had gone blank. We had a power outage. Why now? The storm was gone, the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared into a fairly nice looking day. Well, I'd just have to wait it out, wouldn't I? Hopefully it would be back on in time for Price is Right at 11:00; although, probably not that zipping fast. It was now 10:00 AM Tuesday. I immediately called DP&L, our power company. I may have been the first. They had no information on our outage yet.
I went back to the living room and began continuing my reading of Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen. I read a chapter. I stared out the window at the covered driveway. I decided to try shoveling it clear.
Normally, this was no big deal. I had shoveled that driveway many dozens of times over our life here and in much deeper snows than this one.
Times were different now; that is, I was different. I don't mean being nearly 76 years young, either. I have ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). My muscles are deteriorating and I get fatigued rather quickly. (Perhaps I should be reading, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig by Jonathan Eig.)
The constant and overused weather people also reported this was a heavy, wet snow.
Nonetheless, I went out to give it a try.
It was very cold outside and the snow was as wet and heavy as
claimed, covered over as it were with the results of the freezing rain. Still, I managed to make it three-quarters of the way down the drive before the fatigue really set in. While I worked, the snowplows went through several times and scrapped off our street. We have always had excellent snow removal in our community, at least during the 35 years I lived here. Unfortunately, the plows moved great piles of snow across the bottom of my drive and that was discouraging.
As I stood leaning upon my shovel contemplating this development, a pickup truck belonging to my Peruvian neighbor stopped across my entry. One of the Hispanic men who work for him tapped on the passenger window, then rolled it open.
"Here," he called, "I can clear that out for you."
With that he climbed out of the cab, took my shovel and flung away the remaining icebergs and snow blocking the access. He handed back my shovel and told me if I needed anything to stop next door. This was the first of many kindnesses to come my way over the next few days. (Note here, I generally don't care for the use of labels on people; however, given the somewhat distorted presentations in the news I am using such descriptors to show that people are people and neighbors are neighbors, and our real world is not as ugly as some choose to portray it.)
I came in and called DP&L to see if they had an estimate yet when power would return. They did not. It was still being evaluated and no determination had been made other than 70 homes were affected. I went back to my reading, it being daylight and I could see to do that.
My wife and I talked and read and she cleaned a bit more. There was very little else we could do. We had no lights, no TV, no radio, no computer, no internet, and eventually my landline phone emergency battery would die and we wouldn't have that either. I was using my cell phone for which I had gotten it, emergencies. It is not a smart phone. I can't go to Facebook on it. Besides making or receiving calls it can give me the time and it has a built in flashlight. That is the extent of its technology.
We also had no heat and the house was cooling. We were pulling on extra sweaters and getting out the blankets.
We did not have any means of cooking, no stove or oven or microwave. So even though we are in a very tight financial bind this month (and next), and this was not a regular eating-out night, we did go out to a restaurant for dinner. Our immediate neighbors on the left were about to go to a hotel for the night. He told me he would shovel our front walk when they came home the next day. (By the way this is a Black family.) I thanked Joe and they left. My wife and I did not want to get a hotel and spend money we didn't have. We hoped the power would be restored that evening.
I have a portable generator. I bought it two or three years ago after a particularly long power outage one
summer after a thunderstorm. Ever since I have prayed I wouldn't have to use and up until now had only done so twice. I decided to haul it out. I hadn't counted on the ALS being a barrier here, too. I checked the oil and gas. I set the proper setting for start and I pulled the ripcord, and nothing happened.
I ripped that ripcord several times, many times as my arm grew tired, but I could not start the infernal machine. Was it me or the machine, I wondered. I checked up and down the street, but I guessed my neighbors who might know about this equipment were not home. (By the way, the Ridgid Tool Girls were never dressed for this kind of weather.) I decided to call some people from church, but could not find their numbers. My contact lists were in the computer. I looked in that old time rag, the Phonebook, but they were not listed. I had a church directory for a bit ago, but the people I wanted were not in it. They were in the lasted directory, but alas, that was online in the computer. All my life these days is locked with the computer. I called Pastor Randy, my minister, one person whose number I did have. He answered right away, but it turned out he was in North Carolina. I gave him my cell number and he said he would text Bill, a fellow member of my church who had come here earlier in the year to fix my toilet.
I sat around and paced about and tried DP&L again, half fearful Bill would call while I did and I would miss him. They had an update. It was still 70 houses were affected and they were still doing evaluations of the situation, but they estimated power would be back...and they hit me hard...on March 15, which would be tomorrow...at 11:59 PM, more than 24 hours in the future. I told my wife it wouldn't be up until tomorrow, but not the time. I wasn't sure she could take it. She was already having panic attacks.
I still hadn't heard from Bill. I wanted to contact Paul, another gentleman from church I thought might help, but I didn't know his number either, so I called Jean, who I thought might have Paul and Pat's phone. She did have. I called and got Pat. She said she would speak with Paul.
I waited and I paced and I paced and I waited. My phone was quiet. I went outside to try starting my generator again. I failed again. Then I saw an SUV pulled up in front of Ron's house two doors down. Ron's family had moved into the community a couple years after we had and we became quick friends. I think they were the first Black family on our street back then. When I saw the vehicle I thought it was him so I walked down. I figured he knew about generators. I waved and the driver got out carrying a pizza box. Oh, it is just a pizza delivery, but ti wasn't. The guy was a friend of Ron's from the fire company. I told him I was going to Ron's about starting my generator. The fellow said he'd come up and take a look at it after dropping off the pizza. He knocked on the door.
Ron came to the door. The fellow told him he heard they had no power so he got them the pizza. I told Ron my dilemma and both Ron and the guy came with me toward me home. Just then my phone rang. It was Paul, who said he would come over, but I told him I now had help. He said call him if they couldn't start it.
As we walked up the street we saw a pickup parked in front of my house. It had a snowplow on the front. I saw my wife come down the lane. The truck belonged to Jean's son, who had been out plowing.
My phone rang again. As I answered I heard the generator start. The call was from Bill. Half a village was calling or coming to start my generator.
The generator was going. The problem was in my strength, not the machine. I ran a line into the house and plugged in the refrigerator and a lamp. We tried the TV, but with the power out to the main system box it could not connect to the cable.
I tried hooking in a space heater, but this only ran a bit then quick. The space heaters don't like
extension cords and turn off for your protection. I discovered later I could have plugged the heater directly in the big fat generator cable, but then I couldn't have plugged in anything else.
It was almost midnight. I called DP&L again. They were sticking to the March 15 at 11:59 PM story. We turned off the generator and went to bed. My wife was a nervous wreck. She stayed in the living room. I went to my bed wearing three pairs of pants, a shirt two sweatshirts, three jackets, two hats and two hoods. I piled on the covers.
The house was getting very cold.
TO BE CONTINUED.
