Counting Your Blessings

More news today from the western part of the state. Seems my sister-in-law and her son have a little bitter-sweet storm story. Unfortunately we will need to add them to the list of people without power. Living in Harvard and in the country, they are prepared to lose their electricity and having had invested in a generator, could manage for a period, using gas. Like others in this state, they had received notification that their power was likely to be out until Thursday. Luckily, they live in an old Shaker style house with several fireplaces. This is like living back in the Sturbridge Village era, where you just keep loading wood on the fire, and you can prevent freezing your butt and plumbing and, are able to maintain your residence in a somewhat primitive manner.

I cannot fathom living without electricity or heat. We are one of the residence on a main line, and are not usually without power for any length of time. Like the outages of the sixties where brownouts stretched the entire east coast, there are exceptions. At least that happened when heating ones home was not a factor as it is now. It proves over and over again that the people who pickled were better off than those who lost all of their frozen foods. We know they used root cellars for some vegetables and potatoes which got them through the winter. They were pretty much self-sufficient.
It would be worthwhile to revisit some of those culinary techniques before they are lost forever. When your cut off due to a storm, and unable to get around, either due to road closings or other circumstances you sure feel isolated and vulnerable. It may be one of the hardest weeks of their lives. Good thing her son is a scout and is learning survival skills, and that their are no babies or elderly in the house.

Like most people in her area, the tops of trees fell due to the stress of iced limbs. She heard tree droppings all around, while in a dark house. It had to be frightening. I recall one winter going through something similar having a tree fall in front of my kitchen window. Luckily it did not hit the house. That winter we lost our electricity, phone and road access for days. Live wires were across our road as well as trees. The snow blew against our garage door and was very deep. It was hard to get information to our family that we were trapped. Now we have cell phones, and we can recharge them in our car if necessary. The one thing we did maintain was our water. Everyone else, my son, brother, and sister-in-law did not and they now know how important it is to have water in stock. My son scooped his water out from around a tree which had a stone wall enclosure. My brother and his son used a rope tied to a pail to retrieved water from a brook nearby.

Life must have been difficult in the eighteen hundreds, keeping their coals during the night to stoke them in the morning. No running water or toilet facilities no electricity. Warming beds and boiling water at the hearth. And pee-pots.

People are clearing trees from their lawn. My sister-in-law got lucky, her tree fell onto the roadway and the town had to remove and dispose of it. Nothing left to do now but wait and count your blessings. Don't worry Christopher, Santa will still come, it will be just a little bit harder for the reindeer and sleigh to get around this year. So, in the words of Tiny Tim, "God Bless us, everyone."