6:25 p.m.-
After
a day of heavy clouds and rain all afternoon and plans to go home after work
and pout in a chair, we are here. Anchored in the home office beside the
leaning maple where I do to get the most sun on summer evenings. The river is
not any higher than last time despite heavy rains upstream over the reservoir
and locally moderate rain.
The
power went out yesterday afternoon. The building went dark, motors and machines
whined to silence. A scream echoed from the back corner of the building where
the ladies' bathroom is, without emergency lighting.
The
side and back walls have emergency lights. They lit for a minute or two and
went dark. Brian, the owner, picked up the phone to call the electrical
authorities, slapped his head "duh," and ran out to his truck,
yelling at me to look up the 800 number. In my excitement I gave him Michigan's
Upper Peninsula. Another 877 number put him in touch with Madison's
power-outage receptionist two hundred miles south. I calmed down and found
Wisconsin Public Service's hotline.
Busy.
Across
the parking lot streams of people flowed out of WalMart creating disorder. Car
alarms beeped and motorists yelled and a traffic jam compacted cars all vying
to be first out of the main exit.
Brian
finally got 'hold of a recorded lady on the phone who told him "based on
prior experience with outages in your area, it will be at least 4:00 before
power is restored unless the cause is more extensive, is our hope."
It
was a slow afternoon. No shoppers were present, just us and the girl in a snit
who'd stopped in to use the potty. Jeff sat on the pallet of sunflower seeds
and babbled funny quips. Amy and I sat on the Solar salt stack. She whispered, "is
he on drugs?" when he laughed and laughed.
"Yes,
for pain in his knees and his back and his feet and his neck. And, for
debilitating memory loss, the doctor has prescribed others."
A
man in a newer white Taurus parked.
"We're
without power," Brian shouted out his truck window. The man dialed a cell
phone and talked for five minutes.
Brian
came inside. A woman stopped for a faucet washer and went away grumpy. A man on
a cane holding up a line trimmer spool and a receipt expecting a refund
struggled out of his Escort.
"Can't
help you sir," said Amy. The power is out all over this side of town. We're
completely shut down, computers and printers and paint shakers all."
"One
of your assholes sold me the wrong one. I've driven from Crivitz.
I want a refund. Now."
His
car rolled down the slight slope and bumped into the concrete light pole.
Jeff
laughed and laughed. I said nothing.
"This
is outrageous. I want the phone number of the head office. Where's the manager!"
Brian
rushed around aisle 7 with a flashlight, responding to unhappiness in the dark.
"I'm
the owner. Will that do?"
"What
the hell sorta' scheme you runnin' here. That laughing dip-shit sold me this
green spool and I need a orange one."
"I'm
sorry for your trouble, sir. I will be happy to refund your money if you'll
come back when the power's restored, but there is nothing we can do at this
time. Public Service said it'll be at least 4:00 until it's back on.
"Here.
Have a Tootsie roll on me." Brian grabs a penny Tootsie roll from the
impulse tub on the counter and holds it out graciously. The man swats it to the
floor.
"You'll
be hearing from me!" He limps out into the foyer and stops, looking out. "Who
stole my car!"
"It's
over against that light pole," I pointed. "That's where you parked."
Jeff
laughed and fell back on his back across sunflower seeds. Brian threw a handful
of Tootsie Rolls at the limping man's back.
"Over
two-inches of rain in less than 45 minutes up in Three Lakes," said a man.
He'd driven up to the entrance where Brian stood watching the rain and had
overheard that in Wal Mart. The power was "out all the way to Starks,
north to Menards, and south to Harrison Hills," he said too. And gas was
going up seven cents a gallon tonight, he reported. "Tankers have been
running non-stop since 5:00 this morning to stock up on the old price."
He'd
had a call from his buddy who's neighbor's brother drives for a gasoline
delivery firm.
At
3:30 Brian told Amy and Jeff to go home. "Even if the power does come back
on by four o'clock, which it won't because they're always wrong, we won't have
any business."
Jeff
goosed Brian's butt and laughed going out.
Motors
whirred, printers clacked, and lights in the ceiling glowed as sodium halide
bulbs do when electricity stirs through them. Commerce came back to life. A
steady stream of hardware shoppers came in and moved through and departed with
amazement that just a mile or two north nearly four inches of rain had fallen
in twenty- twenty-five minutes and that gas prices were set to rise unjustified
overnight.
As
of Tuesday afternoon it is still $1.64.