The Return of Electricity (and Old Habits?)
The experience of a simpler way of life this week, courtesy of mother nature, was unexpected and frankly, unwelcomed. I like my computer, wi-fi, fax machine, air conditioning, washing machine, dishwasher and food refrigeration thank you very much. Television I can do without.
The funny thing is I have three TVs in the house; one in my home office, one in master bedroom and one in the living room. A bit much for just one person don’t you think? I cancelled my satellite service at the beginning of the year and have only one antenna. I can’t recall the last TV program I watched at home. I did just get Netflix (2 week free trial) so I will be using the living room TV to watch videos, (or just use the new 20″ iMac in the office). Still, I don’t see myself watching many movies at home.
Interestingly, my first Netflix DVD arrived on Wednesday, the day the electric went out. The title I selected on Tuesday? Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. So Thursday afternoon I’m sitting at Hartford Coffee with my laptop and headphones watching this documentary tale of corporate corruption and energy manipulation. How poetic. I knew I’d get angry the first time I saw this film but as my home was without power I could relate to those in California who were without power during rolling blackouts as Enron’s traders exploited power plants and electric availability for a buck (ok, thirty billion bucks).
I spent Wednesday night at home in the heat. A breeze would have helped but my old storm windows and older wood windows just don’t operate as well as they should. If more would work property I could have gotten a slightly better breeze. My house, a 1917 corner storefront, never had a sleeping porch but many houses of the era did. A sleeping porch is something I’ve wanted for a long time and may seek out in my next property.
After finishing the Enron documentary on Thursday I accepted reality that I’d be without electric for days, not hours and thus sought out a hotel. It seems everyone else came to that conclusion long before I did as no rooms were available in the entire region. All the hotels either were booked or without electricity themselves. Many friends were without electric and I didn’t want to inconvenience others as well as give up personal privacy. So, I decided to look upon the outage as an adventure and check out a place outside our region. Looking over a map I considered Jefferson City, Columbia MO, and Rolla but settled on Mt. Vernon, IL. Roughly 90 minutes east of St. Louis on I-64 heading toward Louisville KY I thought this would be a good choice.
The Days Inn promised a king bed, indoor pool and wireless internet. It delivered that in a highly suburban setting just off the highway along chain hotel and restaurant row. As it was late I went to Chili’s for dinner rather than seek out a local place. Local flavor would have to wait until Friday.
With the exception of high humidity Friday started out great. Unlike the night before, I sleep great and awoke refreshed and ready to explore. I checked the map on Google before leaving the hotel and knew what to expect: the main drag, Broadway/IL-15, became one-way eastbound through downtown with Main St. to the north serving as one-way westbound. As I approached downtown the one-way street began and drivers were encouraged to quickly make their way through, not stop and linger. Big mistake, big.
Downtown Mt. Vernon was once quite charming with the attractive stone courthouse occupying the center square bounded by Broadway on the south, 9th on the east, 10th on the west and Main on the north. Today two of the four sides of the square have been bastardized with horrible buildings. Another side is half urban with a dreadful bank ruining a prominent corner. Still, much potential exists in the fabric that remains.
I enjoyed lunch at a new upscale restaurant open downtown (9th St. Grill) and as I finished I began to see the clouds approaching. Walking around getting photographs it began to sprinkle then rain. I made my way to a local country & western clothing store on the square (Main & 10th) just as the rain really began coming down. As I shopped the music on the store radio stopped for an urgent notice — Mt. Vernon was under a tornado watch (or was it a warning?). The wind and rain soon picked up and it was clear I would not be leaving the store until the storm passed. I finished my purchase (they were having a sale!) just before the power went out leaving me, the owner and her young son in the dark. The storefront windows began to shake as the wind continued to pick up speed so in the dark we made our way to dressing and storage rooms behind the counter. Thankfully the windows didn’t break out but it didn’t look good. During this time I talked to the owner about Mt. Vernon.
Turns out she is on the board of their downtown development group (website). So as the winds downed trees and ripped awnings off nearby buildings we talked traffic control and other things they are examining. This woman (I didn’t get her name in all the commotion) is untrained in urban planning but she had a keen sense of what it takes to create a friendly and thriving downtown. An architect whose office is in the a great old bank across the street is president of the group.
After the storm passed I drove back toward the hotel. Trees, signs and awnings where down the entire way. Areas of streets and parking lots were flooded. Traffic signals were out. This looked way too familiar! I kept hoping that somehow the hideous suburban area with mostly underground electric service would still have power. But no, the entire area except for a single gas station and an Arby’s were without power. The gas station a few doors from my hotel sustained substantial damage to the canopy over the pumps. I figured I’d have better luck being in St. Louis without electric so I packed and returned.
A friend had offered me her couch and I arrived at her downtown loft just as she was getting home from work Friday afternoon. Downtown, it seems, is pretty immune to such outages with only 9 customers in 63101 without service per Ameren’s map. The next morning we headed from the 10th Street lofts to Printer’s Lofts for an early breakfast and to watch the final stage of the Tour de France before Paris. If you hadn’t heard, American and Mennonite Floyd Landis won this year after helping Lance Armstrong for the U.S. Postal Service team 2002-2004.
Another downtown friend left for a week in Florida on Saturday afternoon so I moved my things over to her loft in the Railway building. Ah, privacy. And internet. And a big shower. And a nice gas range in the granite island. Today I decided I was going to cook as I had been eating out a bit too much. I had called my home fax around noon and still no power. Later I started cooking and at 2pm decided it was time to call home again (about every two hours seemed right). It worked, starting a pot of beans did the trick as I got the high pitched sounds of my fax machine.
I may spend another night in the loft, giving my A/C time to cool off my house after I go and get all the windows closed. Also, I need to check the internet service to make sure it is working OK before I take my computers (yes, plural) home.
I was talking with a long-time friend and Seattle architect today and we discussed if I’d learn from this experience or return to mostly oblivious power user. Hard call at this time but that manual mower I bought a year ago after Katrina hasn’t seen much action this year. My Honda scooter, however, has taken me nearly 2,000 miles in local traffic.
This week I was shopping for a new George Forman grill or similar. I of course checked out local stores like Casa Semplice on 10th Street but I wonder if I want yet another electric appliance. I already own nearly every electric kitchen device known to man so will another make my life better or simply more dependent upon the power grid? The computer and fax are not going away but I can certainly get a nice grilling plate for my gas range rather than an appliance to do the job. Yes, this assumes the continued availability and relative affordability of natural gas.
What have all of you taken away from this experience?
– Steve
If the power goes out, the basement is a wonderfully cool place to sleep (depending on the basement I guess). One thing that I did notice was how conditioned I was. Even though the power was out, I still flipped the switch every time I walked in a room. I kept catching myself doing it, but only after the fact. It is also pretty amazing how the street changes when there are no streetlights. I’ve never seen my street with no lights before. Another thing that was also kind of a shock to me was when I tried to get milk. I guess everyones milk had gone bad, so when I went to get some there was very little left, and no 1%. The idea of everything not being available and at my finger tips kind of made me wonder if this is what life will be like if (when) the oil economy collapses.
Thank goodness for finished partially subterranean basements! Mine was wonderful for sleeping, but I just can’t read by flashlight.
This was nothing compared to the flood of 1993. When they turn off the gas, you’re really in trouble. Water heats a lot faster in a gas water heater than in a microwave oven (trust me I know this firsthand!).
I really like my refrigerator. I guess I would have never made it as a pioneer in a wagon train.
The current topic, and your experience, made me realize how much has changed over the years in our expectations about the reliability of our power sources–and in our behavior as well.
As I write this, most of the New York City borough of Queens is without power, and a small section of my home borough of Staten Island is, as well.
Gradually, since the first citywide blackout in 1966 or ’67, it seems to me that we in New York have come to think and behave in ways that would have been unimaginable–almost un-American! –before. Can it be that St. Louis is so different?
Example: As I write this, only two rooms in our house have lights on–the two rooms we actually occupy at this moment, she in the bedroom, I in my office. Combined, those lights reach and illumine the hallway and staircase as well. No need to turn other lights on, though in the past, we would have done so without a second thought. Not any more.
Example: These days, when I start to turn on the bedroom air-conditioner, I sometimes pause. Will my switch be the one that, once flipped, causes my neighborhood, my borough, my city, my region, the nation to go dark?
The choice to flip the switch, turn the knob or press the button isn’t quite as simple as it used to be. It doesn’t happen all the time or even most of the time, but sometimes we choose to leave the switch unflipped. I can’t believe we’re the only ones who’ve experienced this change in consciousness.
What’s more–per the cover story in the current THE NATION–there’s evidence that the environmental movement is becoming less the province of wealthy white men and crossing class and even racial boundaries to become a truly mass movement.
Is it enough? Is it too little, too late? Will people finally be willing to inconvenience themselves enough to save the planetary legacy? It’s obviously impossible to know for sure.
But I think we start by looking at our own behavior, as you have in this topic.
Thank you.
When the machines that are supposed to make our lives easier cease operation, we are helpless.
Over the last five days, we’ve met new neighbors, and worked toward common goals with old ones. We’ve helped friends, and have been helped by friends. We’ve celebrated accomplishments, and have cried together in frustration. Most importantly, we’ve found that St. Louisans have the great capacity to come together in the face of tragedy, have a wonderous sense of community in the face of adversity, and have a true love for each other that can overcome all the differences that exist between one another.
“What have all of you taken away from this experience?”
That when the earthquake hits here, we are going to be in deep trouble! The archaic governmental structure of the region makes resource sharing difficult and during times of extreme crisis it will really hurt us.
I learned that I love my RayoVac Workhorse lantern. It has two fluorescent tubes and lights up a whole room wonderfully so that I can read and go about my business without having to hold a flashlight. I can’t remember what I paid for it, but it was worth every penny.
I also learned how LOUD all this machinery is — the world was so quiet.
It was nice to meet you Saturday morning. Great muting! Hooray Floyd!
“That when the earthquake hits here, we are going to be in deep trouble!”
Ironically this weekend Discovery Channel had a “Mega Disasters” marathon on. One of the episodes featured the Great Midwestern Earthquake with a particular focus on St. Louis and Memphis.
Needless to say an 8.0 earthquake on the New Madrid will cause some inconvenice here in St. Louis. Not to mention the resulting massive flood and firestorm.
I’m also concerned about the earthquake issue, but it’s been apparent ever since Katrina that we’ll have to fend for ourselves on that.
On the grill front, we got a Lodge cast iron grill/griddle. Great on gas burners and campfires.
https://secure.lodgemfg.com/storefront/product1.asp?menu=logic&idProduct=3942
I’m working on my own post about this incident. But I have to tell you, the power outage, in my experience, was a welcomed suprise.
Let me first preface this by saying that my computer contains a vast majority of my life’s work. I work from home (currently) and I have one of the FUNNEST jobs in the world. But my job depends on my computer.
But something interesting happened over the three days we were out of power. My neighborhood came alive in a way that I’d never seen before. I currently live on the west side of Forest Park in the St. Louis side of the DeMun neighborhood. Nearby high-rises like the Dorchester and the Versailles were completely without power.
My neighborhood is populated by mostly college students, young working professionals, young families, and a smaller percentage of older residents. So as you can imagine, I don’t see many of them around except for when they are coming or going.
I walk my dog 1-3 times daily but during the outages things felt different. All around people were outside, talking to each other, reading, looking off their balconies. On DeMunn, though all of the businesses (Sashas, Jimmy’s On the Park, Kaldi’s) were without power, Sasha’s had a full crowd on their sidwalk cafe drinking wine and reading or talking. The park was alive, neighbors out with their kids or starting community games of Frisbee. People were simply finding other things to do than sitting at home infront of their computer or watching TV.
I myself found other things to do. I listened to the radio, read a book, played some jazz tunes on the guitar. I always wondered about why so much great music came out of that era, now I know.
Later that evening my girlfriend and I sat infront of our open windows, catching the incoming breeze, drinking wine and listening to a battery powered radio. The power came back on, but we left everything off. There was something rewarding about being without electricity.
Overall life seemed less stressful and more rewarding. My community seemed alive and interesting. While I do need my computer to make my living, this temporary portal to a time before modern technology was a welcomed incovenience.
^ I share those sentiments. During the power outage, my neighborhood felt like a real community. People poured into the streets to relieve the boredom of no electric indoor entertainment. Now that the power is back on, it’s tough to resist the lure of the internet and TV. But I found the last few days enjoyable (after the weather cooled off). I had a couple of very nice evenings reading by candlelight with a cool breeze blowing through the house, and falling asleep with the Cardinals on my battery powered radio. It almost felt like a vactation!
Along with the gains, I think we’ve really lost a lot with the advent of all of our indoor, private entertainment. A lot of the time I spend on the internet or watching TV/movies I might otherwise spend outside or at a local bar or cafe.
Also, I found myself *really* appreciating the fact that it was a nice day on Saturday…normally I don’t really care because no matter what the temperature outside is, it’s always about the same in my car/office/home. So this experience really reinforced how disconnected from nature I am.
I may think about instituting a “weekend without electricity” once or twice a year…I think I’ll wait until fall though 😉