ROTHENBURGER — The power of electricity

COLUMN — We take for granted so much in our modern lifestyles.

My great-grandparents lived in this very house without insulation, electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing. It was heated by a maze of pipes snaking from room to room, connected to a wood stove that probably got as hot as the fires of hell in winter. They carried their water from the river.

That was fine, for them. Nowadays, a power outage can bring you to the realization that, without electricity, things get boring pretty fast. I experienced this the other night during our chancy weather, when a storm cut the Hydro connection.

I discovered it when I got home from town just after five o’clock. Okay, I said, this calls for calm. Let’s accept that the TV is going to be off for awhile. I’ll throw some leftovers in the micro and heat up some dinner instead.

That was my first reality check. They haven’t yet invented a microwave that doesn’t need electricity. So, I had cookies for dinner.

Without electricity, there was no water. Fortunately, I found a half a bottle of wine in the fridge, still nice and cold. Chocolate chip cookies and Chardonnay go together surprisingly well.

Then I called it in, using the only phone in the house that still connected to the outside world. B.C. Hydro’s power-outage line is pretty good — a voice-automated system that guides you through the steps to reporting an outage and sets you up for a return phone call when the cause is found and an ETA for return of service is known.

It asked me if the outage was throughout the neighbourhood or just at our house. I assumed it was a neighbourhood thing (they always are) so I answered accordingly.

Catching up on emails and doing some surfing would have been a good use of this down time but that was a non-starter. Out came the book I’m currently reading — Wise Acres, by Michael Kluckner, about living in the country where amenities are few and far between. Perfect material for such an occasion.

That lasted until the sun started going down and it got too dark in the house to read. Anyway, with no air conditioning, it was getting a little stuffy.

Undeterred, I repaired to the back porch with my book, dragged the dog’s bed out beside my deck chair, and we both began making the best of it. The cat soon showed up, and she squeezed in beside the dog, all of us enjoying an evening looking out at the river and observing the end-of-day goings on as the rains came.

The cowardly marmots had gone to bed, the magpies clung to the branches of a tree swaying back and forth, the wind blew and the rain pelted down, but we three hardy pioneers were safe and sound under cover, bravely observing it all.

The hummingbirds were undeterred, swarming the feeder five or six at a time as always, zipping in and out, flying out into the storm and quickly returning for more fuel.

At Wise Acres Farm, the Kluckner family was contemplating which sheep to have for dinner, and building a chicken coop with recycled lumber.

It was getting too dark even to read outside, and the half bottle of Chardonnay was long gone, by the time Syd got home from the gym.

“Did you know there are a couple of big wires hanging down from the power pole out by the road?” she asked.

“No, I don’t usually go out and stare at the power poles when I get home,” I said.

“Maybe you should,” she said. “There’s a couple of big wires hanging down.”

I got in the truck, drove down the driveway toward the road and, sure enough, on the sixth pole from the house, there were a couple of big wires hanging down. Just like Syd said. The fuse connector thingie had been pulled apart by the storm, which was the reason I arrived home to find there was no electricity.

It was time to phone Hydro again, this time finding a live person, who advised us to stay a safe distance from the wires (which were out of reach anyway), and a crew was on its way.

Syd lighted a couple of candles and we settled in with flashlights for some bedtime reading. It was 10:15 p.m. by the time the headlights of the Hydro truck appeared out on the road and the crew set up beside our power pole, and another half hour before the lights flickered on.

It was an appropriate time to reflect upon how lucky we are to have so many conveniences, and perhaps to resolve not to rely on them quite so much.

Instead, I went and popped some toast in the toaster and turned on the TV and watched a show. It was good to be back to normal.

Mel Rothenburger can be contacted at armchairmayor@gmail.com, on Twitter @MelRothenburger or on facebook.com/mrothenburger.7.