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Down and out for 28 Hours
First thought in my head when the power went out at 4:12 p.m. EST on August 14th was some grid in the office building I work in must have crashed. Two minutes after it happened my brother, who works for the railroad, called and said: "So you're power's out, right?" I said "How do you know that?" He replied with: "Because it's out in the entire province." That's when I knew this wasn't a tiny annoying little power outage. Word started trickling in that power was out in New York, Michigan and as far as Ohio. It was pretty damn scary. I called Whe to make sure they were all OK and told Mini-Whe I couldn't get home because the lights weren't working. He started crying. I felt so awful. I hung around the office until about 6 p.m. because, looking out the window, one could see that traffic was an absolute disaster. When I finally decided to leave, with my pal Redfehu, we filled our water bottles, checked the level on my gas tank (half a tank, a good thing) and headed out. I got her home by 7:30 and got myself home to Oshawa by 8 p.m. First thing I did was call Mini-Whe to tell him I was home. His response: "YAY!" Suddenly, I realized I only had 13 cigarettes and $10 cash so I went for a quick drive up the street on the hunt for smokes. All the stores were closed. I started smoking half a cigarette at a time. Our neighbours, who own a camper, had a generator with the TV running and also had extra cigarettes. They generously gave me a couple, a can of Pepsi to mix with a bit of rye my brother and I had in the cupboard and barbecued hot dogs for us for dinner. They were awesome. As I tried to sleep, the light of the waning moon poured through my bedroom window, I could see Mars to the right of it, glowing brightly. I knelt on the floor in front of the window, arms on the sill, wondering what the next day would bring. At 6:30 a.m. I could hear my brother outside talking to the neighbours - I looked at my alarm clock, no light was flashing - meaning no power. I yell good morning to them out the window. Our neighbour is making us coffee on his gas stove. I'm told the premiere of the province has declared a state of emergency and all non-essential workers are to stay home - best news I could possibly hear - so we've all got the day off work to sit around and ponder what went wrong and when will it go right again. Much of the day many of us were walking around in a powerless fog. Not only was there no power on, but most people felt powerless to do anything about it. My brother and I drove around looking for cigarettes and gas (a local variety store owner let us give him an IOU for the former, thank god but the lineups for gas were too long), he finally found a bank machine so we managed to get propane for the barbecue, canned goods, bottles of water and yes, more cigarettes! A friend of his called later in the day, offering us a 40 ouncer of rye - we accepted it, of course! By 7 p.m. Friday, we were resigned to another day, or even another week without power - it felt like it was never coming back on - and were barbecuing the rest of the steak and chicken in our freezers. At about 8 o'clock, my brother and I were in the kitchen and we hear our next door neighbour yell "We've got power!" I slammed my hand across our light switch and on it went. Everyone was on their front porches yelling "Woo Hoo!" and giving the thumbs up. What a relief. So there we were with chicken, steak, pepsi, gingerale and a 40 ouncer of rye in our cupboard there was only one thing left to do - make some ice and start drinking heavily. During any type of emergency, not only do you take stock of what you have in your cupboards, you take stock of who and what is really important to you. I realized after all this that I have gained not only a greater appreciation of my brother and my neighbours but I've gained an even greater love of one other thing - cigarettes - I will never be caught shorthanded again!
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