TERRE HAUTE —
The picture window of my cabin is sealed in a perfect glaze of ice as I write this, last Thursday morning, and since it faces due north and sees little direct sunlight, I imagine I will be looking through this shower door glass of mine for a few more days. But since I sit and watch the woods much of the time, instead of writing, I suppose the ice is serving a rare good purpose in keeping me on task.
I’m afraid I am going to have to leave much to the sun in the next few weeks, hoping that it soon melts away the hockey rink of a driveway I have. I have spent much of this day — another away from school — out and about in the cold, but strangely content. We made it through the ice and the snow and the wind of last week with relative ease, and it was just so nice to see the blue sky and the dripping eaves and the light playing with the ice today that I am forgetting about grumbling for a while about the winter weather.
I have no hard luck story to tell about pain and suffering during the big storm. We did lose power at our place for a good while, but we had our fireplace to huddle around, and water and blankets and food to pull us through.
It is ironic, however, that we leave much of what we learn to such traumas. One of those lessons reinforced to me was that we are a citizenry that has come to accept our creature comforts as rights instead of luxuries. I stand guilty of that.
It was no mystery, this storm, this creature that was spawned by mixing cold fronts and warm air and moisture, was coming after us. We knew of its brewing days before its arrival here, yet, like most other folks, I imagine, I waited until the first icy raindrops were falling before I headed out after work last Monday afternoon to make sure my truck’s gas tank was full and that we had extra milk in the house.
Besides the rain, there was a panic in the air as I loaded my supplies into a grocery cart at a local store, a bit miffed that I hadn’t gotten there sooner to snatch up a few extra canisters of propane for my lantern, perhaps an extra can for the kerosene my salamander heater burns, although I hoped I wouldn’t have to run it. I saw a few folks literally raking the contents of shelves into their carts with little regard as to what was on them. Batteries to bread, salt crystals to soup, the place was pillaged.
As I drove home, the ice already clinging to my windshield wipers, I was worried a bit about the tree limbs that hang over my house; I had meant once again to get those trimmed last summer. Now, I could almost hear them crashing down on my roof, driving gaping holes through the shingles into my attic or tearing my new gutters from the eaves. I was thinking about what a thin shell we all have between us and the elements as I tucked my truck under our barn’s overhang, almost certain that the storm, in all probability, would not be as bad as everyone thought it would be. I was wrong.
That evening, as freezing rain pelted us, I padded around the house, glancing through windows, first into the back yard, then to the south toward the barn, and at other times to the west, fidgety, restless. I brought in wood for our fireplace, just in case, and spent considerable time filling our oil lamps, antiques that still have the most practical of purposes. I moved the family wagon to the barn, too, and saw to it that our outdoor cats — both claimed and transient — had straw in their boxes. I noticed that the rain had given way to pellets of a hard sleet, and that they weren’t sticking to anything; that was a good thing, I told myself. I made one last trip out the door to get my camping stove and noticed that it was like walking on pure white, large-grained sand. Until 10 o’clock, until the minute that our lights flickered, then died, I was pretty sure that we’d luck out.
It was just us — my wife, Joanie, and me — in the house that night. We will soon have to get used to not having anyone else there with us, and since we had our supper in us and our baths taken, we decided to sit by the fireplace to read until the power surged back to us. The dry old sycamore and maple logs I had lit were popping and cracking a pleasant tune, but I began to wonder, particularly when we heard the rain begin again and the wind to howl, if it was going to be so pleasant after all. Eventually, we shut off our bedrooms, and she headed to the couch. I laid down near the fireplace to keep the fire tended. The house cooled and clicked and creaked.
I slept miserably, constantly aware I needed to feed the fire. By 4 a.m., the house had cooled into the 50s. My nose was cold, and I rolled into a ball, and waited for the morning’s first light. I awoke at 6:30 when I heard the beeps of the microwave and dishwasher and computer modem as they came to life. I jumped up to adjust the thermostat, shut the fireplace doors, turned off a few stray lights, and headed off to bed, where Joanie had gone a few hours before after the sofa had put a kink in her back.
As I sipped coffee and looked out a back window into our crystal woods at 10 later that morning, the power died again. It would be off for another 8 hours. We recommitted ourselves to books and crosswords and casual conversation. My buddy, Joe, who also had no power, called to see if we needed anything; my brother-in-law, Phil, who did have electricity, did the same. My son came home and headed back out to get gasoline for his future father-in-law’s generator. We had our cell phones, but we saved their battery power since an old rotary telephone we keep worked. With it, we kept in touch with relatives and friends, many of them in the same icy boat in which we were afloat.
News reports began to come into our news center: The power wouldn’t be restored until midnight … until the next day at noon … until the day after that in the afternoon.
We were aware that it was to drop to near zero that night, and again, I pictured bursting water lines and fractured roofs and began to worry. At best, since I wouldn’t leave the house unless I just had to, I imagined hours of silence and cold. The house had cooled back into the mid-50s yet again, when as we had just finished a can of stew cooked on that camping stove by lamplight, the lights came on.
It is ironic that while we sat near our fireplace without the companionship of a television or computer last week that I finished reading Bill Bryson’s “At Home.” It is a wonderful book about the development of the house over the centuries. In the closing chapter, not long before our home came to life with lights and sounds and the breezes of furnace heat, I read this passage:
“One of the things not visible from our rooftop is how much energy and other inputs we require now to provide us with the ease and convenience that we have all come to expect in our lives. It’s a lot — a shocking amount. Of the total energy produced on the Earth since the Industrial Revolution began, half has been consumed in just the last twenty years. Disproportionately, it was consumed by us in the rich world; we are an exceedingly privileged fraction.”
Bryson is right. We are fortunate, and we know deep down that we need to take better care of what we have, because someday, when our lights go off, they might not come on again.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com or by writing to him c/o The Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com. He is currently working on his third book.
Mike Lunsford
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Tribune-Star columnist Mike Lunsford
Discussion
THE OFF SEASON: Lessons learned from the night the ice fell
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Taking a road less traveled in this illogical life
If you can still recall reading the poetry of Robert Frost in your high school English class years ago, I imagine that you can conjure up a line or two from his “The Road Not Taken.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
Man Falls Off Crane, Dies After Police Standoff
Witness Describes Fla. Face-chewing Attack
Raw Video: Cop Shoots Man Eating Another's Face
Man in Crane at Texas College Says He's Armed
Unexpected Smog in Pristine National Parks
Obama Honors Fallen Troops at Arlington Cemetery
Raw Video: Deadly Explosion at Minn. Paper Mill
Dairy Farm Uses Chiropractor to Help Cows
Romney Promises World's Strongest Military
Russia Condemns Ally Syria Over Massacre of 108
Air Canada Plane Makes Emergency Landing
Raw Video: Earthquake Shakes Evacuees in Italy
Obama Pays Tribute to Vietnam Veterans
Beryl Knocks Out Power in Florida
Raw Video: 19 Dead in Qatar Shopping Mall Fire
15 Dead in Northern Italy's 5.8-magnitude Quake
Service Dogs Help Wash. Soldiers Battling PTSD
Raw Video: Memorial Day Aboard Intrepid
New Ticks Spread Across Southeast, Diseases Rise
Beryl Makes Landfall on Florida Coast
Los Angeles Bar Bans Bachelorettes
Hamster Plays Dead
Beyonce Shows Off 60 Pound Weight Loss at Concert
Drunk Women Breaking Into Houses: A New Trend?
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Gordon Ramsay Carried Off Field
Man Dies Getting Lap Dance
Kim Kardashian Claims Items Stolen from Her Luggage
Bear cools off in Calif. family's pool
Ep. 3: Chopped Desserts
Air Force dad surprises family at baseball game
Justin Bieber Wanted for Questioning for L.A. Scuffle
J.Lo and Marc's Friendly Reunion
Jet makes emergency landing after debris falls off
Cynthia Nixon Ties the Knot
Woman, 80, Falls Out of Skydive Harness Mid-Jump
Keira Reveals Engagement Ring
