Stormy Weather

This column originally appeared on Sunday, June 15, 2008

Our friend Judy was happy. Judy was ecstatic. If Judy was a movie, she'd have been “Happy Gilmore.” If she was a song, she'd have been “Don't Worry, Be Happy.” If she was a member of the “Black Sox” baseball team that threw the 1919 World Series, she'd have been Oscar “Happy” Felsch (1891-1964; OF. 38 HR, 446 RBI, .293 BA, lifetime).

And all because she got to sit through a thunderstorm on Tuesday evening.

Judy, Judy, Judy.

Judy was visiting from her home in Vermont (Motto: “Freedom, Unity and 101 Inches of Annual Snowfall”) and stayed long enough to hear the first rumblings of the storm as it made its way across West Vincent's tweed, cheese and horse-dung country. She reacted to the noise as if Christmas had come early and she was 8 years old again. She reacted as if Thor, the god of thunder, had been her favorite Marvel Comic Books character and the Norse Super Hero was making a personal visit after all these years.

“We just don't get storms like these in Vermont,” she explained, as the rest of us sat around the kitchen table and wondered if the storms in Vermont are accompanied by the sounds of kittens purring and babies cooing in their cribs. Whaddaya mean? Have they moved the Maple Syrup State into a new meteorological region that eschews liquid precipitation mixed with static electricity? Does the lack of a storm-themed Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream flavor mean the climate in Vermont up and dumps the whole concept? (Note to Ben: Suggested flavor: “Chocolate Thunder Thighs.” Check with Darryl Dawkins for promotional tie-in.)

“Oooooh, the tops of the trees look like they're fighting one another!” Judy exclaimed to the actual chronological children in the room, Trevor and Emma, standing next to her quivering like wet dogs in the cold. “Isn't it breathtaking!” she squealed.

Yes, we thought quietly to ourselves, breathtaking in the sense that in a couple of minutes the air conditioning is going to go dead and we are going to be inhaling stale, moisture-laden air that reminds us of the last time we took a steam at the Y.

Sure enough, within moments of her declaration that the lightning bolts on the horizon suggested the ultimate majesty of Nature harnessed by man for civilization's progress that would ultimately result in free health care for all, the power went out. We guessed that the folks in Vermont who don't get to see these kind of summer storms also don't get to stare at a light bulb that went out 20 minutes ago waiting for it to come back on, only to be teased by a momentary flicker and then 48 straight hours of no TV.

We left Judy with a big hug and a loving wish to come back sometime when we can show her how emotionally fulfilling freezing rain can be, and headed home. We wanted to make certain that our neighbors on South Church Street all had plenty of power to keep them cool and crisp and television-enabled. We wished that for them because our recent spiritual enlightenment had taught us to pray for others' happiness and not our own.

We were rewarded richly for our entreaties, because the folks across the street from us had their living rooms lit up like Times Square on New Years Eve, whilst our quarters were as dark as a Norse cave. On South Church Street, you remember, the folks across the street always have power.

As Tuesday faded, we sat outside on the porch before going into the microwave oven that we once knew as our bedroom, watching as the neighbors happily turned their light switches on and off regularly, just for the visceral pleasure of having the light bulbs respond.

The flashes typed out a Morse Code message. It read, “Happy, Judy?”

The Power and the Envy

This appeared on Sept. 3, 2006


The woman told the waitress at the Magnolia Grill the only reason she and her husband were having breakfast out Saturday morning was bad luck.

"Every time a raindrop falls on our house, the power goes out," she said.

Her exaggeration may only be minimal. As Chester County's population grows and the number of PECO lines intersecting the landscape follows, it seems now that whenever Mother Nature so much as sneezes, thousands of lights go off from East Bradford to East Pikeland.

And as the darkness encircles them, people all across the county get up, look out the window and say the same thing that the woman did:

"The people across the street have power," she intoned into a cell phone on which she was registering her complaint with someone she imagined had the authority to turn hers back on. "The people across the street always have power."

It is like a rule of thumb around here: You're in the dark, and the neighbors are safe and well-lit.

Friday night's Ernesto-blown wind-and-rain storm proved that maxim once again to my neighbors and I in the 300 block of South Church Street. As we sat out on our porches after the lights had gone out, trading candles and firing up Coleman lanterns, we gazed across the street and saw comforting yellow windows of lights burning brightly.

"The people across the street have power," we told one another. "Why do the people across the street always have power?"

I've spoken before about this after-storm jealousy that infects us in West Chester. When it quits raining and the wind has died down, we go out on foot searching for the areas of town that either have power or don't have power.

Finding a block as dark as our own, we feel vindicated. "Thank the Lord I'm not the only one without electricity," we say. "I thought I was being singled out by the PECO-gods."

Finding a block with the lights lit up like a Las Vegas showgirl's wedding, on the other hand, we feel angry and cheated. "What're they, Exelon execs? They better than we are? Somebody paying somebody off?"

I don't know if there is a rational explanation as to why the people across the street always have power. I don't even know if the people across the street always do have power. After all, if my power stays on during a storm I don't go around checking whether my neighbors have had their circuits blown. I just turn up the volume on the hi-fi and sing along with Dylan.

And, truth be told, sometimes getting your power blown can be a good thing. When the power went out in June, my friend Jamie's wife Cheryl engineered a system for keeping the food cold and the water fresh that would have made Rube Goldberg gasp in astonishment. When the lights went back on, she was almost sad; she'd have to resort to simply flipping a switch to get things going rather than dropping a bowling ball in the laundry basket, or however the contraption worked.

As for me, I think my neighbors and I have gotten to known one another a little better because of our shared experience on the front porch during power outages. We get to share a glass of wine, catch up on gossip, re-tell stories from the last storm, and maybe even meet one another's family or friends as they stop by to commiserate.

So you see, lady, maybe the people across the street aren't so lucky. After all, that Magnolia Grill breakfast looked awful good.

Not A Normal Night

This appeared July 23, 2006

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

I was reminded of that sentence, the opening of George Orwell's "1984," on Wednesday as I strolled the streets of West Chester surveying damage from the evening's storm and power outage.

Not because of any notion that Big Brother was watching, but rather because as I walked, my watch read 8:30 and the chimes on the clock on top of the Chester County Courthouse were cheerily pealing out the count of 10.

That's the way things were in Chester County the past few days - not quite in order, sometimes way off the mark.

It began with the heat, was punctuated by a swift thunderstorm that wiped out the power grid and ended with a shared experience that gave us something to talk about with family, friends and strangers. The whole experience was not unlike those snow days we have in winter, when the normal rules of social engagement don't seem to apply.

Except, of course, that the mercury in the thermometer was flirting with 100 degrees Tuesday.

It is well documented, not only in these pages but in hundreds of comments and missives that I've made and sent to people I know, that I am not a hot weather person. I've made it known that I would sell my not inconsiderable influence in the editorial department of the Daily Local News to anyone who would build a public swimming pool within easy walking distance of my home on South Church Street.

So, I was not feeling happy that evening, trying to erase the heat with an ice bath, when the lights went out, the fans went dead, the air conditioner stopped running, and everything got a little quiet.

That's what I noticed most, as the lightless evening faded into moonless night: It was quiet.

Usually, we've got the university kids to contend with - those jolly folk who need an excuse as trivial as coming to a complete stop at three stop signs in a row to declare party time and begin howling at the moon. But they're away this time of year and so I had only the whoosh of a passing car or the thumping of a free-spirited jogger going by to break the quiet as I sat on the stoop.

I was drawn outside, too, because frankly it was cooler out there. The air doesn't move well in my second floor unit without some heavyweight industrial circulation machinery to help it, so I stayed outdoors past midnight - again, a time I am rarely awake to see.

Later, drifting off to sweaty sleep, I quite expected that any moment I'd be woken by the sound of appliances coming back on as the power was restored. But, by the time the birds started announcing that it was a new day and time for them to start feeding, nothing had changed: no lights, no air.

I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood to see who the electric company gods had smiled on. That's the way it is when the power goes out in West Chester. Nothing comes back on all at once; each block has it's own time, and we all go crazy wondering why the folks across the street got their power back and we didn't. It's a jealousy thing.

Along an alleyway off Dean Street, I saw something that said it all for me about the long powerless night: A fellow curled up contentedly asleep on a couch on his porch.

Perfect, I thought. When normal life goes out the window, the best thing to do is change course and adapt. And if the clock strikes 10 o'clock at 8:30, adjust your watch accordingly.