Off the Grid

“Off the Grid”

THURSDAY JULY 15th

The only indication that there had been a power failure was the sound of the emergency generator kicking on, the soft hum of its engine audible even through the back wall of the house.. When Brad looked at the clock on the nightstand it was blinking at twelve o’clock so he knew something was wrong. Groping in the dim light of one small lamp he found his cellphone. It read 3:20 AM. There had been warnings of planned local brownouts and blackouts due to problems with the electrical grid but he’d expected them to happen during daylight hours when people wouldn’t need to turn on all their lights. Carla was still asleep beside him and he slid out of bed carefully to avoid wakening her.

The scene outside his living room window was unnerving. Beyond the edges of his yard, illuminated by his porchlight, there was nothing but an inky darkness; no other porch lights, no streetlights and no omnipresent glow in the sky from the commercial buildings at the bottom of the hill. The blackness made him feel strangely vulnerable. A quick look out the patio door just offered the same view in the other direction. His house must have looked like a beacon to anyone who was looking out of a window.

Even though he’d been careful his movements around the house had been enough to awaken Carla and she joined him by the patio door. “What’s going on, honey?” It looks like the power went out.”

“Yeah, ours is okay because the new generator is doing what it’s supposed to but it looks like everyone else has a big problem.”

“I hope it’s just one of those short blackouts they talked about on the news. It’s still pretty warm out there.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough. I’m going back to bed.”

Even when daylight came there was a sense that something wasn’t right. Brad stood in the shade of covered front porch and looked up and down the street. It had been four hours since the power had failed and there were still no signs of activity. No one was outside and there were no cars on the street. Things were quiet and still on what should have been a normal, bustling workday morning. When Brad turned on the television all he got was static and electronic snow on the screen. Even the radio stations were silent. To test his cellphone he called Carla’s number but it didn’t ring. He figured that the cell towers were probably out along with everything else. It was obvious that even with his generator working his family would be disconnected from normality, at least for a while.

Earlier in the week, Midwest Power had announced a plan for conducting a series of rolling, short duration blackouts to conserve power and Brad figured that even with the summer heat his family could handle it. They had installed room air conditioners in their bedroom, living room and in their son, Aaron’s room. In a typical ten-year old’s thinking the kid saw the blackouts as an adventure. Even with the new generator Carla and Brad were more realistic. When the power had gone out at 3:20 it should have come back on no later than 5:30 if you believed the news release from Midwest. The fact that the power was still out at 7:30 seemed to indicate there was a bigger problem. A number of earlier news stories had reported details of the state’s antiquated electrical grid. Despite years of promises to repair and upgrade the system not much had been done. It was the politics, the broken promises and two consecutive hot summers that had convinced Brad that he had to take some kind of action on his own. The generator was the result.

Phone calls to his office produced no results and he saw no point in driving downtown to what would probably be an empty building. Carla called her nursing supervisor at the hospital and found out they were on generator power but still in operation. She decided to go into work and maybe find out more about the scope of the outage. Brad realized all he and Aaron could do was stay home and just wait to see what happened.

About ten o’clock there was a knock on the front door. Brad had barely opened it when Mike, his next door neighbor blurted out,” Hey, is your power out? Ours went out in the middle of the night.”

Brad sighed. “No, Mike, we have power, just what our generator can give us but our main supply has been out since early this morning.”

Mike was clearly upset. “Our bedroom got really warm when the ceiling fan stopped and when I got up to check our panel I saw your porch light was on but the whole street was dark.”

“Well, Mike, I guess it was just our turn for a blackout.”

“This is nuts! They said it would only last for maybe two hours but it’s still out over six hours later.”

“Yeah, I’m not happy about it either but I guess all we can do is wait it out.”

Mike could feel the cool air from the living room. “When you got that generator and that big propane tank I thought you were crazy but I guess you’re the smart one in the neighborhood.”

Brad held back a smirk. “Well, call it climate change or whatever you want, but our summers keep getting hotter and we decided we had to do something.”

Mike was quiet for a moment before he said, “It’s supposed to hit 90 this afternoon and I figured Lisa and I would have to sit in the basement for a while. It’s a little bit cooler down there.” He paused, a sheepish look on his face. “Unless you’d like some company to share you’re A/C with.”

There it was, the request that came as no surprise. The request he’d expected ever since they’d bought the generator. Carla had warned him about it and even the technician who’d installed it joked that when the power went out the generator would make them the most popular people in the neighborhood. Mike’s request was no surprise but Brad still didn’t know how to answer him.

“Uh, well, Mike, I’m not sure yet how the whole generator thing works or how long my power will last. We’re going to keep our usage to an absolute minimum in case the outage is a long one.”

“But your house will still be a lot cooler than ours.”

Brad didn’t like being boxed in, especially in his own home. “Look, Mike, this blackout makes us all a little uneasy but we just have to take it in stride. If you and Lisa want to stop by for a brief visit after Carla gets home it’s okay but we have our usual dinner and family routine to deal with.” He’d hoped the word “brief” had caught Mike’s attention.

“Okay, I appreciate it. How about sixish?

The brief visit lasted nearly two hours and would have gone longer if Carla hadn’t gotten up, walked into the kitchen and started making noise with the pots and pans. Later, over dinner they’d wondered aloud what might lie ahead for them. Even Aaron’s feelings of adventure had faded.

FRIDAY JULY 16^th

When Carla had been at the hospital the day before she’d learned that the outage was statewide and beyond. Localized rolling blackouts had quickly turned into an engineering nightmare and there was no solution in sight. The hospital’s generators were operating smoothly but at a scaled down capacity because of the uncertainty of the duration of the outage. The hospital CEO had announced to the entire staff the need to buckle up for what could be a long, rough ride. She told Brad and they agreed not to pass that information on to Mike and Lisa in case it might give them ideas to hang around even more often.

With Carla at the hospital and Aaron playing with friends in the backyard pool it had become Brad’s task to deal with the many requests from the neighbors. Word had gotten around quickly that Brad’s house still had power and there was a steady stream of people, some who he barely knew, coming to the door to avail themselves of his generosity. By four in the afternoon his generosity had been pushed beyond anything he’d ever expected.

Bob Marshall wanted to charge his cellphone even though he knew there was no signal. Along with that he wanted to charge his son’s X-Box and his wife’s i-Pad. Heather Marx wanted to use the microwave to heat lunch for her kids. Daniel Broadski’s elderly father got frequent headaches and Daniel asked if he could spend a few hours in Brad’s air conditioning to ease the pain. A particularly rude request came from Arnie Williams from across the street who asked if he could throw a couple of burgers on Brad’s gas grill and wait in the cool house while they cooked. When Carla got home she poured them each a glass of wine while he started telling her all of the requests and favors he’d granted that day. She was sympathetic and said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you out with everything but I guess it’s up to us to do the right thing and help them out.”

About an hour later came the request that changed Carla’s mind about doing the right thing. There was a loud and rapid knocking on the door and Carla opened it and saw Greg Desantis, his wife Marnie and their three kids standing there. Actually there was more squirming than standing.

“Hi, Carla,” Greg began. He looked nervous and anxious. “I feel funny asking you this but we figured that since you still have electric power your water pump is also working and we, well, can we all use your bathroom?” Our toilets won’t flush.”

Brad was finding it harder and harder to control his temper.

SATURDAY JULY 17^th

With the uncertainty of when the power would return, Brad had tuned off the air conditioners in the bedrooms and the family had spent a fitful night trying to sleep in the living room. The generator was still strange, new territory for a man without much technical know-how and for the first time since the power had gone out, Brad was worried about how long they could rely on that big, humming machine in the backyard. The gauge on the propane tank read half full and he had no idea how many more days or hours he had left even with the steps he’d taken to reduce their power usage.

There still wasn’t much happening on the street, just a few dog walkers and a young woman pushing a stroller. From what he could see from the front porch there were a lot of open garage doors and he remembered one of his previous-day visitors saying that people were sleeping in their cars with the air conditioning on. He wondered what Day 3 of the outage would bring. Carla was already showing signs of stress from a lack of sleep and all of the things she had to do for the neighbors. Even Aaron, usually a happy, easy going kid had become withdrawn, spending his time sitting on the carpet lost in his video games. Brad thought about everything the three of them were going through even with their limited air conditioning and water. He could only imagine what his neighbors were experiencing with neither. It had become a struggle to balance his sympathy with his irritation over their constant requests for help.

Every man reaches a breaking point, a moment when there is simply no more patience or compassion left in him. Brad reached his around two o’clock that afternoon. He and Carla had just returned from a driving tour of the city to see what, if anything, might still be operating in the blackout. They were back in their garage just getting out of the car when Aaron came hurrying toward them through the back door.

“Dad, Mom, you gotta’ hurry and see this. I didn’t know what to do! The look of panic on his face made Carla exclaim, “Honey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Just look out back. I couldn’t stop them!”

They all walked through the door and stopped in their tracks. Their small above-ground pool that they’d bought for Aaron when he was only five years old was full of people. They were standing in the waist-deep water, laughing it up like it was some kind of party. When Mike spotted Brad he called out, “Hey, neighbor, hope you don’t mind our using the pool. We’re practically dying in this heat and…hey, we brought beer!

Brad turned to Carla and said, “Oh great, four kids drinking sodas and six adults drinking beer, in our pool with no working showers or toilets in their houses. What could go wrong?”

Carla struggled to be reasonable. “Well, maybe they won’t stay long.”

Aaron looked up at her. “Mom, they’ve been in there for like two hours.”

Brad sighed. “I turned off the pump and filter last night to save a little power. I don’t want to even think about what’s in that water now.”

With that, Carla had finally reached her own breaking point. “That’s it. I’m out of neighborly love and compassion. This is our home not a damned hotel.” She turned toward Brad. “Are you going to say something to them or do you want me to do it?”

“I’ll do it,” he growled, “this bullshit has got to end.”

He walked toward the pool, not even trying to smile at his freeloading neighbors. Mike seemed to sense Brad’s anger and said meekly, “Hey, there’s beer over there in the cooler.”

Brad stood at the edge of the pool and took a deep breath. “I’m not thirsty, just pissed. If you wanted to cool off why didn’t you ring the bell first and ask us?”

“I did that but you weren’t home. I told the others that you were a great guy and you wouldn’t mind. It’s just so damned hot out and our houses are hot too.”

“Mike, you have a backyard pool too and so do some of the other families, why did you have to choose mine?”

“We don’t have power, remember? Our pools are already getting scummy without the pumps and filters working.”

Brad had a choice; just tell them the party was over and let them leave or smugly tell them his real concern. He chose the latter. “Mike, I turned off my pump too, to save power. The ten of you, ten of you without access to toilets, have been drinking liquids and standing in the water for two hours. Do you think all of you have been holding it in until you got home?”

The look on Mike’s face was shared by everyone within earshot, a mix of surprise and revulsion. Brad didn’t say another word, he just stood and watched the rush of bodies toward the ladder. He saw Greg bending down to whisper something to his son and heard the boy yell out, “Oh, gross!” In just a few minutes the crowd had moved to the lawn, holding towels and rubbing themselves as though they were scrubbing something off their bodies. A few people gave Brad half-hearted waves as they left and when the crowd was gone Brad walked back to Carla and Aaron.

“That was just plain awful,” Carla said angrily.

Brad nodded and turned toward Aaron. “Buddy, I’m going to have to drain the pool so I’m afraid it’ll be off limits until this whole thing is over.”

SUNDAY JULY 18^th

The traffic to their front door had dwindled. There was just one quick stop from Mike to apologize for the pool incident. The other neighbors, the ones who hadn’t been able to get through a single day without asking for some kind of help from Brad and Carla, had either figured out how to deal with their hardships or were too embarrassed to ask for more. Brad had even wondered if some of them might be angry that he and Carla didn’t just open their doors to anyone with a problem. The power crisis had brought out the worst in some people and both he and Carla figured that things were probably happening the same way in neighborhoods all over the state.

That evening around seven o’clock, when the automatic shutoff on his generator had activated, when the street lights had flickered on and the power had finally returned Brad stood on his front porch and looked up and down the street. Garage doors were closing. Lights were coming on in windows. People were standing on their own porches to take in the long awaited view of normality. The return of the power was welcome but he wondered how long it would last. And he wondered if the crowd of sweaty, bedraggled people who had taken over his pool the day before had learned anything from the experience.

Carla joined him on the porch and they quietly watched while life on their street slowly returned. Finally, Carla said, “I think we both know this could happen again, maybe even worse.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we just had a taste of a new normal.”

“So what do you think, should we get a bigger generator?”

He hesitated then answered, “A big generator or a big gun.”