A GRILLED CUP OF COFFEE AND TWO DAYS IN A POWER BLACKOUT
6/12/08
The lights came back on today, after two days without power. I was doing my FM radio show on Tuesday night when during the middle of my interview with civil rights attorney Harold Burbank, the first wave of severe lightening hit the station, disconnected the phones and the control board went out . I reset the control board and the phones still worked so I called Harold back and continued our interview. Then five minutes later another CRACK of lighting hit nearby , hail stones began to pummel the windows and roof and a Severe Thunder Storm Warning from the Federal Weather Bureau , overrode the control board with a shrill alarm and a three minute warning. I recovered the control board for one minute , when another CRACK of lightening hit close enough to the studio to shake the building , then all the power went out leaving us in complete darkness and without phones.
After waiting 15 minutes for the power to return and trying repeatedly to reset the control board, my co host and I decided to leave the studio in the dark . We could see that the power was knocked out on the entire street and soon realized the entire town had lost power. Trees and branches were strewn across the main roads, fire and police units were out in full force closing side streets and directing traffic. When I arrived home, as I got out of the car and walked up the side walk to the house in total darkness, I tripped over a fallen limb, caught my balance and then tripped over another one. Several large trees had fallen however, the house was safe. Only the top of one tall tree had fallen several feet from the front door but didn’t hit the house.
Generally in power outages in North West Connecticut power is restored within an hour or so in most black outs, but the storm was so severe it knocked out the power in four of the surrounding towns. Estimates of repair time were two to three days . Our town would be without power for at least two days. They were right. We just got our power back early this morning.
Yesterday morning as I was outdoors speaking to my neighbor. We both felt that the greatest inconvenience to the storm, besides losing all power for several days , was the inability to have our morning coffee. To many Americans like ourselves coffee is an essential element in our process of waking up in the morning. As we looked around at the fallen tree limbs and listened to the sounds of chainsaws BUZZING and generators BURRING, our desire for a cup of coffee seemed to remain a priority concern. As my neighbor and I were standing on his patio I commented that we were lucky we had gas grills to cook food with during the power outage. Then the idea came to me to make coffee on his grill. My neighbor took only a second to agree with the idea, and we made the preparations. I went into my house and brought back a large metal pot filled with 12 measured cups of water and coffee mixed together, and a metal strainer. My neighbor started up his grill and within 15 minutes he and I were enjoying a hot cup of grill made coffee. We invited our spouses to join us, and for nearly an hour we all ignored the devastation around us as we sat together on the patio talking, drinking our coffee, and sharing a loaf of sweet bread. The sky was blue, a slight breeze continued to blow across the patio, and the morning sun was bright and warm.
As we all sat and talked together my neighbor sat back in this chair and looked at the sky and smiled a broad smile, and said, “This is really a beautiful day.” We all agreed with him as we sipped our grill made coffee and looked at the fallen tree next to the house, and all the leaves and tree limbs scattered around both yards. As we sat there enjoying the company and the beautiful weather , none of us were concerned about the power failure, or the inconvenience, or the fact that we couldn’t drive out of our driveways, or that our town and four surrounding towns were completely without power. We all commented that we were very thankful that we were safe, the weather was beautiful , and we had our morning coffee.
L.A. STEEL
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