“Whatever your feelings may be, you must make a joke of everything at sea; and if you were to fall from aloft and be caught in the belly of a sail, and thus saved from instant death, it would not do to look at all disturbed, or to make a serious matter of it.”
—Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Two Years Before the Mast
The Great State of Denial
It’s now painfully obvious that we didn’t take the warning signs seriously enough, delaying our emergency preparations until we suspected the power was down for the long haul. Given the morning ice storm and the momentary outages throughout the day, we should’ve anticipated the worst case scenario. The dialysis center called and asked us to come pick up Bruce, so we scraped the thick ice off “Ava” and made a run out west of the bypass. A few branches were down along Main Street, and there were small trees snapped off around the Boyle Schools campus, but it really didn’t look that bad to me. The temperature had risen and the ice was melting. Bruce said he was just sleepy and would’ve been fine to drive before long, but the staff were just eager to shut down early and go home. I drove “Bert” back, avoiding the 400 block of West Broadway. Dana and Bruce tried to return that way and reported it nearly impassable, due to the tree damage. Another clear warning sign that this was not typical winter weather.
When the power went out and didn’t immediately come back on, I knew to ready the candles, lanterns, and flashlights before darkness arrived. Tree branches were shattering all around us and sirens were screaming. Our good fortune was that the gas was still flowing and we could fire up the decorative hearth log in the front room. Foolishly, we hadn’t thought earlier to fill the bathtubs as a precautionary measure. The pressure was gone, and now we’re left with whatever tap-water jugs we had in storage plus anything we could still capture from melting roof ice. The temperature outside was rapidly dropping. Terie and Marty showed up as evening fell. We ate a cold dinner, huddled before the heat source, and sorted out the sleeping arrangements.
The “crash bucket” I keep in the basement is on my mind as I complete this entry by candlelight, but I figure I’ll deal with that contingency if we’re still without electricity when morning comes.