When I drove up to our garage at 4:30 on a recent Friday afternoon and the automatic opener didn’t work, I assumed the batteries were dead.
When I came inside and flipped an electrical switch I quit blaming the batteries. When I saw that all the fuses in the electrical box were still in place I called Detroit Edison.
I expected, and got their ‘punch-this-punch-that? answering system. I’ll never learn to like these human-eliminators, but I have accepted them with only mild irritation.
‘Your outage has been recorded and you can expect repair in five hours, maybe more or maybe less,? came the electronic answer.
The house cooled, I had no television to watch Michigan State play Colorado in basketball and no microwave to heat my bologna or whatever.
The ball game was solved with a phone call to daughter Luan. Flashlights and candles lighted my peanut and bread & butter pickle sandwich-making, but nothing was going to warm my house except electricity.
At 9:00 or so I recalled Detroit Edison. I was eventually told something like, ‘I don’t know, you’re a half-hour past the time we gave you and nothing is posted. Call back in about an hour and maybe I’ll have something.?
Now, I have no trouble with that. That gal was following a routine, outlined no doubt by the same persons who recommended eliminating direct customer-company relations.
I told her, ‘Okay, I’m going to bed.?
Therein I finally get to the point of this column. I’m sure many of you, if not most, have had to wait for repair people, company or anything with an indefinite ending.
Your mind wanders and wonders, especially when you’re sleeping fitfully. The house creaked, that must be Edison! A truck light (you know it’s a truck) comes extra brightly through a window. That must be DTE.
The roar of a diesel truck engine comes through the wall. That’s them!
You think you hear voices and you know they’re looking at the transformer. Nothing.
At one point, I got up, went outside and looked at the pole. My flashlight showed some ceramic pieces of something on the ground under the transformer. Must have exploded, I reasoned. Hope they bring the right parts. Back to bed.
Put another blanket over me. Wonder if the furnace will come on and the well pump work when they turn on the power?
After eliminating our kids as a place of refuge because they purposely have no spare bedrooms, I wonder if I should go to a motel?
I have illuminated clocks on both sides of our bed so I don’t have to roll over to see the time, but I rolled anyway, dumb-thinking maybe the other one worked.
Then, at 3:50 a.m. the bright light coming into the house really was Edison. The sound of the diesel truck was just that. I got up and looked, and the voices were under the transformer.
I watched for a little while, then went back under the covers. Before I dropped back into slumber-land, the hall night-light came on.
The world was all right again. Edison had done its job, even though belatedly in my now-warming eyes.
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Epilogue: And then Mother Nature decided she wasn’t done messing with us or our power. She let Old Man Winter have one last laugh and all the rain, sleet, ice and snow meant no power. My little outage was pale in comparison to this lasted round of fallen trees, power lines, no cable and no running water.
Hurry spring, hurry!