Spring Rain

Thunderstorms rolled through here yesterday, loudly announcing the arrival of spring! The sun rose but we didn't see it though the clouds, and about midmorning, it got dark again as those clouds turned black. There was lightening and thunder and all kinds of fun, and we watched out the window and didn't get much else accomplished.

About 11:25am, some 15 minutes after the storm passed and all that was left was the gentle rain and the brightening skies, the power went out. I love when that happens. The world gets quiet like no other time. Usually I don't call the power company right away. I expect some neighbor already has and anyway, why spoil the fun?

But this time I happened to call within about 2 minutes to report the outage. I called again later to get an update on their automated line. Some time after that I received a phone call from the power company asking about our house.

Ok back up a minute - until January, we have owned 15 acres here. The mailbox is at one end of the land and the house is at the other end, which places the driveway around the corner from where the mail box is. We have sold some land and maybe at some point we will have to move the mailbox closer to the house, but the Post Office says they are fine with things the way they are for now. Our address is where the mailbox is. Not where the house is.

So I got a call from the electric company asking me where is my house?? I told her and she said that the guy was in his truck looking for my house. I could see his truck out my window, so I understood the situation. "At the top of the hill", I told her. I could hear her pass the info to him. I asked her if any other houses were without power and she said no, only ours had reported... but she said there could be others that didn't call in because people sometimes figure other neighbors would have already called. Hmmm... yes they do, don't they?

About one minute later a nice young repairman rolled into my driveway. He told me, "Your house doesn't... it isn't..." I think he wanted to say, "it isn't right!" but was trying to be nice about it. I finished his sentence for him and agreed that the house is not where you would expect. He told me it was frustrating (twice) and I apologized(twice). I told him I get calls from the UPS guy sometimes, asking the same questions.

He went out to look at the power pole on the side of the house and sure enough there was a broken switch. "Must have broken when lightening hit it, and then took a few minutes to burn through." I nodded as if I had a clue what he was talking about. I understood enough to know I didn't need any further explanation.

He couldn't get his truck close enough to the pole, so he called another truck to come and he left. When the other truck full of power company men got here they went right to work. They climbed up the pole with those spike-things they have on their boots. Two of them at a time on that pole and one on the ground. They got it fixed -- we were only without power for 2 1/2 hours.

I went outside to tell them thank you, and found the truck alongside the driveway, sitting quietly. "Hey," I said, "I just wanted to say thank you... we have power now."

"I know that," he said. (Well of course he knew, he's the one who fixed it.) "But we can't go anywhere. Flat tire."

Yes indeed, that huge blue and white had a flat tire and sat right there for another Idon'tevenknowhowlong until the another truck -- the tire people -- came and helped them out.

Couple hours, I'm guessing?

Fun day.