Lights out!

After watching it sprinkle off and on all afternoon, my spirits were momentarily lifted by what we in the Northwest Corner like to call a "sun break."  I dashed out of the house and onto the wet sidewalks for an enjoyable four-mile run.  But as I rounded the turn into the home stretch, I was startled by a flash of lightning (unusual around these parts), followed by a crash of thunder.  Several more rumbles seemed to chase me down the street before I reached the safety of home.

The donner und blitzen continued for maybe a half hour once I arrived home.  After an ominous pause, the heavens then opened and we were deluged by hail, hail that piled up on the streets, the sidewalks and the lawns as though it were snow blizzarding in January.  And then, to punctuate Mother Nature's displeasure at only-she-knows-what, at promptly 6 p.m., the lights went out.

I was on the computer when the screen went black, the room darkened, the radio fell silent, and the furnace stopped running.  My reaction was first surprise, then annoyance, and then -- I sensed it gradually creeping up on me -- a shiver of existential dread.

No heat.  No light, once darkness fell upon us, aside from my one workable flashlight.  No cooking.  No entertainment.  And, most awesome realization of all, no internet, no Facebook -- no connection with the outside world.

The outage lasted only twenty minutes, a trivial inconvenience compared with the days without power the poor souls in the Northeast experienced last fall in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.  But when the power goes, you have no idea how long it will be gone.  My thoughts immediately turned to the harrowing logistics of staying alive for days without all the essentials of life.  Even if the power returned by morning, I realized, I was confronting an unpleasant evening and night.

All because we had no electricity, a luxury that many Americans -- and certainly many inhabitants of other countries -- did not have until after the Great Depression.  Even after electrification was widespread, our grandfathers possessed a collective memory of how one lived without power.   If the power failed, they might grumble, but they probably had some old kerosene lanterns lying around the garage, or certainly plenty of candles in the cupboard.  They built a fire in the fireplace.  If they needed hot food or water, they balanced pots and pans on the hot coals.  They threw blankets around themselves and their kids.  They went to bed when it got dark, and got up when it became dawn.

Today, we lack the childhood memories that would help us survive.  Our roots in a pre-electrical past have been severed.  Contemplating loss of power for more than 24 hours creates in us not merely annoyance, but a rush of panic. 

At 6:20, the power came back on.  The house came to life, glowing and humming and rumbling.  The crisis had passed.  The cats -- who had disappeared into the outdoors at the first rumble of thunder -- eventually returned, dripping wet, and allowed themselves to be fondled and dried.    Die out tympani, fade in violins and woodwinds.  All was well. 

But the anxiety remains.  If we lost power for weeks -- perhaps when a giant earthquake, "The Big One," hits Seattle -- we would have to fend for ourselves without the quiet assistance of our electrical servants, servants we've come to rely upon to the point of utter dependence.  We would find ourselves back in the Little House on the Prairie with none of the experience of living in a log cabin that the pioneers themselves were able to fall back on.

My cats -- despite all my silly fears for their health and psyches -- would do just fine.  They can rely on their instincts.  But without elaborate preparations for such a disaster, preparations that most of us think about but never undertake, I'm afraid our cats would survive with greater aplomb than would their nominal masters.