By Terry Manning
There’s nothing like sitting out on your front porch on a country morning, enjoying nature over a piping hot cup of black coffee.
The gurgling of waters rolling along in a nearby creek, birds chirping to coach each other through their morning food gatherings, the buzz of stinkbugs flying around looking for crevices to tuck themselves into.
Sweet sounds are interrupted by the constant hustle and bustle of utility trucks driving past your darkened house to go restore electricity for others.
Life is funny like that sometimes.
You want to be magnanimous enough to place your problems in the context of what everyone else in the world is going through, but your problems are still yours to reckon with. And the outside world can seem nonchalant about issues that affect you, whether your issues are minor annoyances or life-changing disruptions.
Going 10 days without electricity isn’t life-changing, but it certainly is disruptive, no matter how many hot cups of coffee you pick up at the nearest fast-food restaurant or gas station.
I drove to my workplace last Saturday morning. As I and my coworkers greeted each other, happy to see familiar — and safe — faces, I realized we were all asking the same question: “Do you have power?”
Call it power-outage-poker.
“We got our power back Tuesday.”
“Ours came on last night.”
“Last Saturday.”
And my response: “Ours is still off.” That was the winner if you can call that winning.
We good naturedly booed one colleague who said his electrify hadn’t been interrupted by the storm.
I felt worst for a student from Woodruff who said, “Our power went off. And then it came back on. And then it went off again. And then it came back on. And then it went off and stayed off.”
Mother Nature can be a tricky one. I won’t say “cruel,” because that would assume concern. “Indifferent” might be the most fair and accurate descriptor.
It does seem cruel, though, that a threat most people associate with coastal living would have devastating impacts so far inland. Flooding. Mudslides. Downed trees and power lines. Homes destroyed. Roadways washed away. Lives lost.
And not just here in the Piedmont. Whoever heard of a hurricane wreaking havoc on a mountaintop?
Still, the sun came up the next day and each day since then. The creeks rolled along. The birds came out to canvass the yard. Nervous stinkbugs peeked out from their overnight hideouts.
And as I finished writing this column on my smartphone, a utility truck from our local electric cooperative pulled up. A young man in a hard hat spoke with me about our house still having no electricity.
I pointed him in the direction of a drooping power line I saw a short distance down the road. Falling trees pulled it down on the Friday morning the hurricane blew through. He said he would investigate and get back to me.
“We’ve been trying to track down these last outages,” he apologized, “but we have never had to deal with this kind of thing before.”
I assured him, “Most of us haven’t.”
I spent three dark days and nights in a one-bedroom apartment in Pensacola, Fla., years ago after Hurricane Georges tore through. I was told then I got off easy because I lived near the Naval Hospital.
It didn’t feel like it, being forced to bathe from cold water I’d saved in my tub before the storm came. Debating every day whether I should leave my patio door open to let a breeze enter while I was at work or close it for security’s sake and just deal with the hot, muggy apartment when I got home after midnight.
In retrospect, three days does feel like I got off easy.
Last Sunday, I bathed for church in a shower warmed the previous day by a water heater turned on while our new generator ran on the back porch. After the first few days of isolation, we appreciated the near-normalcy my brother’s purchase provided.
A lot of things I used to think were higher priorities – politics, sports, popular culture – proved to be a lot less relevant after the storm. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs asserted itself.
I hope I don’t let that other stuff distract me when the power comes back on, but I know I will.
Terry E. Manning is a Clemson graduate and worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.
