Blackout Story

I’m late on the bandwagon, but everybody else has been telling their blackout stories, and it’s cliche by now, but it really does reflect the type of town you are in. And in my case, it pointed out how much of a small, hippy town I’m really in. It’s a small town, so there wasn’t panic, because even at rush hour we’ve got no subways or skyscrapers, so there weren’t masses of trapped people. The university even had a heads-up that it was coming, as we got e-mail warning us to shut down our computers so as to avoid power-loss damage. It’s a small yet not destitute town, so even though the traffic lights were out, there was the police manpower to put road flares and temporary stop signs at every intersection. It didn’t hurt that, with students still out of town, we were still at half-population for the summer. And we’re a hippy town, so once dark rolled in I was able to sit on the front porch with a friend listening to the imprompu banj-and-fiddle concert taking place on the opposite corner. Many of the people walking through the neighborhood stopped to listen and dance in the flickering light of the road flares. It was very Little House in the Big Woods, with more citronella.