Subject: The Big Blackout

We in Northern NJ are back in business, as of about a half hour ago (it's 10:30 PM here.) Luckily it wasn't TOO too hot.   Hot enough, to be sure, and the air not moving at all.   The other lucky thing was that it happened in mid-afternoon and we all had plenty of time to prepare before it got dark.   That didn't make it FUN, mind you, but it was at least bearable.

Here in Podunk-Land the local gendarmerie wheeled their two portrable generators to each of our two (2) traffic lights in town.   By connecting them to said traffic signals, they supplied power to all the streetlights and shops on the corner.   So there was a pizza joint open, and a convenience store, three blocks from Chez Mike & Wendy.   After a leisurely repast out on the back porch, of grilled tuna steaks and grilled red and green pepper medley (I know that sounds incredibly romantic, but the truth is I have an electric stove, so it was grill or nothing) we wandered off around the neighborhood with a flashlight (which, in the UK, is apparently pronounced "tawtch") and I almost got killed for the SECOND time today.   Wait, let me back up.   The FIRST time I almost got killed today, I was watering the flowers out in front of the estate, and the old hose got snagged on something (yeah, haw haw, I know, but some day YOU'LL be almost half a century old, too....) and so I gave it a small tug (yeah, I know) and it promptly parted in the center, sending me flying into the street and landing flat on my back with half my hose in my hand.   (Yeah......) My head hit the deck with a sonorous crack.   Great, I had time to think, I'm gonna be found dead in the street holding half of my hose.   (YEAH......) But it turned out I was okay, though I have a bit of an extra knot under my hair now.   And THAT'S when the lights went out.   Stupid metaphors were swirling all around me.

And so, anyway, after we had dinner in the dark, on the back porch, with a citronella candle flaming away, we went for a walk.   And we headed toward the intersection where we could see lights and hear the generator.   In doing so, we had to pass a small shopping center where there's a supermarket, a donut shop, a pizza place and a deli.   All closed, of course, with no electricity.   Stopped, in the entrance, are two cars, side by side, engines running, lights on, pointing out towards the road.   The occupants of the two cars are chatting.   One of the cars, the one closest to us, is a local police car.   And the occupant is a uniformed police officer.

[Are you like me?   Do your eyes ALWAYS play the same trick on you when you see the phrase "uniformed police officer?"   Do you, as I, always, EVERY TIME, accidentally read it as "UNinformed police officer?"   And, if not -- does this mean I'm dyslexic, blind, nuts, or do I just have a deep-seated disdain for authority figures which I am not aware of?]

Anyway.   Yes, it sure is dark out, but said PeaceKeeper has his fucking headlights on and I am wearing a blazingly clean white t-shirt.   And as I step RIGHT in front of said headlights, Mr.  John Law ends his conversation and heads out into the road, without looking.   And the fucker actually bounced me.   I had the time and presence-of-mind to jump up onto his hood (or "bonnet") and thus avoid suddenly becoming considerably less pretty.   He stops.   I roll off, flash him a filthy look, and just keep walking.   He's completely stunned.   So much for the reaction time of our local police in time of crisis.   It took him a full five seconds to say "You alright?" I answered disgustedly, "Yeah, thanks" without turning around.

"Local man run over by stationary police car! Thousands weep! Tens of thousands laugh their asses off!"

Adventure over, we ended up at the aforementioned convenience store, where I purchased a Diet Dr. Pepper and consumed it sitting on a bench outside, watching the cars go by and marvelling at the concept of the electric light (courtesy Mr. Thomas Edison of New Jersey.) By the time we walked home, the lights were back on and I came downstairs and wrote this for you to read in the morning.......

Anyway, it gets way sillier.   Something may have occurred to you by now which did NOT occur to either myself or the (in this case) UNinformed Police Officer.  

To wit:   notwithstanding the lack of actual mangled flesh and splintered bone fragments, this was in fact an "automobile accident." And I had "left the scene." Something the police tend to frown on, and rightly so.

Well, I was startled, annoyed, and still ambulatory, and I really didn't think about it.

BUT THE GUY IN THE CAR WAS A COP.

Well, duh, okay, so it did finally occur to me the next day.   I decided to take a little trip down to the local Police Emporium.   Figuring, of course, that said officer would have to have made some sort of report about the incident.   I figured I would tell whomever was at the window that I was the guy who got bumped by the police car, and I was okay, and put the whole thing to bed.

I strode up to the bulletproof plexiglas, and....hang on a second.   Don't you just LOVE the bulletproof plexiglas at these places?   Isn't it a hoot the way they IMMEDIATELY place you in a subordinate position by making you yell whatever beseechment you may have through this impenetrable barrier, just to make yourself heard?   Anyway.   I spoke to Mr.  Desk Officer Dude, with a big smile on my face, and said "Um, hi -- did any officer report bumping his car into a pedestrian last night?"

The guy's face clouded over and got really grim-looking.   "Wait here, sir." And he walked away from the window.

When he came back, a few seconds later, he barked in an annoyed tone, "Why did you leave the scene, sir?"

The retort that immediately occurred to me, of course, was "Let me answer that question by posing another:   why did the un-informed police officer LET ME leave the scene??"   But I elected to hang onto that one for the nonce.   I just explained that I wasn't hurt, and that I was really annoyed at the time, and (still with a big smile on my face) that I try to avoid getting into arguments with people who have guns and are allowed to use them.

This didn't amuse him either.   "The officer said you refused to speak to him and left the scene."

"Well, no, actually, he asked me if I was okay, I said I was, and walked away angry. If he needed me for anything above and beyond that, and had said so, I would have waited.   Hey, can I ask you why you're giving me a hard time about this?   I just came here to let you guys know who I was, that I was okay, end of story.     I wasn't expecting to be treated like a criminal."

In clipped tones he demanded my name and address, which I tendered and then duly boogied.   Ah, another fun day with the police.   These are the same local police who pull me over EVERY SINGLE TIME I come home after midnight, making some bullshit excuse about My Car Fitting A Description, or One Of My Eight Taillights Being Out, or whatever.   I've never given them any hassle or problem about anything and I don't expect I ever will.   But they sure ain't so very friendly to this here taxpayer.   Shame on me for coming home after midnight (whom do they think the Dunkin' Donuts is open that late for, anyway?   Just them??)   And shame on me for walking ON A SIDEWALK at the precise moment that one of their own decided to drive across it without looking first, eh?

Grrrrrrrrrr.......

I believe I've mentioned this before, but just in case not: the last time we had a complete power-grid failure blanketing most of the Northeast was in the summer of 1977.  I was working in the computer room at a bank in Times Square, where there are more lights per square-inch than pretty much anywhere in the world.  The power went out just after 9PM.  Three of us sat and waited, like fools, for the power to go back on.  It never did, of course, till mid-day the next day.  And we were stuck there. Subways were out, the last bus home had left at midnight, and oh boy I get to sleep in the bank.  With a girl who, at first, decided that this would be a really good opportunity to do something with me that you wouldn't precisely do in a bank in the daytime -- but then CHANGED HER MIND.  At an inopportune stage of the experience, to say the least.   And the whole thing had been her idea in the first place.

(Where was the third person, you ask?   Upstairs.  Sorry.)

Anyway, we went outside for a little while.  Positively surreal.  Times Square, dark as pitch, and the streets literally teeming with people.  And cars.  Mainly taxicabs, since the subway wasn't running.  Against gargantuan odds, two of my friends came walking past the bank.  Not knowing that I was working there.  Tens of thousands of people crawling the place like ants, just like New Year's Eve, and it's "Oh, hi Bob." Unbelievable.