Taking Things for Granted

It was around 4:30 on Monday afternoon of September 11 when the thing I had been dreading became reality: the power at my house went out.

With the wind howling for most of the afternoon I hoped against hope that it would somehow stay on but after several close calls, I was officially without power. With the wind continuing to blow something fierce I had little hope of it returning anytime soon.

By Tuesday morning I still did not have power. I knew power crews were out of force and were working as fast as they could to get everyone’s power back on. However, with such a large volume of outages, I knew realistically it could be days before it was back on. Plus our neighbors in Florida were dealing with even more damage and many power crews were in that state.

My house gets its electricity from Georgia Power. Typically the company gets the power back on very quickly whenever it goes out. However, my mind immediately went back to a couple of years ago when an ice storm moved into Winder and I was without power for three days during less than ideal conditions.

My estimate this time was I would have power back again by Friday—maybe.

Four days is not an eternity of course but I would have to make plans to keep certain things—especially my prescription medicine in the refrigerator—from spoiling. By mid-morning Tuesday Georgia Power was still not giving any type of estimate for when the power would be back on so I texted my friend Steve Brown who said he never lost power at his house.

I took everything out of my refrigerator I wanted to save and took them to his house. After squeezing everything into his already full refrigerator (two full refrigerators actually) I sat down with my laptop and began writing my newspaper articles for the week.

I decided for some reason (I honestly don’t know why) to go to the Georgia Power outage map. When I did it said the electricity at my house was on. “This can’t be right,” I thought to myself. I called a neighbor who informed me the power was in fact on.

I stayed at Steve’s house to write a few articles since deadline was looming as I didn’t want to go back home only for the power to go off again. Once finished I loaded up my supplies and went back home to see the television and den lights on as they had been when the power was taken away.

Electricity is really not a luxury but a necessity these days but we certainly take it for granted. I was fortunate that the night I was without it was not an extreme temperature one either way. My house stayed comfortable and I was able to sleep fine despite my worrying about when the power would be back on.

To be without power for less than a day was actually a blessing last week. I know many people were without it for three, four or five days. Some did not get it back until Friday and a few posted they were still without it until Saturday. Yikes.

Once the stress of not having power was gone, I spent a good portion the afternoon on September 12 picking up the small limbs that were scattered in my yard. After a couple of hours my yard looks somewhat normal again and I had gotten in a pretty good workout.

I checked the small thermometer inside the refrigerator that my better half bought me a while back and slowly but surely it was returning to the “safe” zone.

Clearly the linemen and other power company employees had a difficult task in getting everyone’s power restored in a rapid fashion. We all know they are trying their best but in cases like last week it simply takes time, even with extra crews here to help.

I admit it gets frustrating but I hope I never get to the point that one area woman did where she reportedly threw a cup of water in the face of one worker.

Later in the week the sun and blue sky had returned and the Hurricane seemed to almost fade to memory. I didn’t have to deal with any fallen trees and the roof to my house survived as well.

Monday of this week was a completely different story. Sun is shining through the window as I write this and the wind is calm. In my case, a week certainly makes a big difference. I know some, including many in Florida, are a long way from being back to their normal routine.

Monticello native Chris Bridges is a long-time newspaper columnist. He welcomes feedback from readers of The Monticello News at pchrisbridges@gmail.com.