Randy Fitzgerald

Last week was the first week in 18 years that I failed to write a column, but it wasn’t because I’m a slacker, as my son has suggested. It’s mainly because I no longer have a good editor to call me up and say, “Where’s the column?”

But in fairness, I have been extremely busy. Barb and I are expecting about 75 high school classmates for a reunion picnic at our little farm up at Keswick next Saturday; and, though we started preparing for this with some much-needed renovations way back in May, somehow it makes us a bit nervous to realize that six days out, the farmhouse has no electricity—and hasn’t had any for the past month.

If you’ve tried to get anybody to do any work around your house lately, you know what we’re up against. Four months ago we hired a very nice gentleman to replace some old wiring at the farm because the fuse kept blowing when we plugged in a lamp and a razor at the same time—not a good sign. He assured us we didn’t need a permit from the county for that small effort and went merrily on his way ripping wires out and putting wires back.

Nevertheless, when the men from (I still call it) VEPCO came out to turn off the power so he could hook up the new meter box, they had collective apoplexy around the meter when they found out we had spent only $16,000 on renovations to that point and promptly turned off the whole electric works until we could spend another $2,000 on the electrical project. They sent us off to secure the permit we hadn’t needed from the county, purchase a new box, hire a new electrician, arrange an inspection, and spend as close as we could get to that additional $2,000. I was doing all of that last week. But the power is still off. Of course, that means the pump doesn’t work either, so there’s no water in the house, meaning no bathroom.

While our 75 classmates grew up as country kids, I’m not sure they’re ready for that much rusticity. I know I’m not. I’ve also been wondering how Barb is planning to cook the 18 frozen lasagnas now waiting in our Richmond freezer for the trip to Keswick on Friday night, but last week I got good news. “It’s not a problem,” Barb said, “since we can no longer open the oven doors up there anyway.”

It turns out that the nice gentleman who did our renovations shoved the stove so close to the side wall in order to accommodate a larger countertop that the windowsill now blocks any chance of opening the oven. So we must get someone in to saw off the windowsills (all of them, I guess, so they will be matched) so that we can use the stove, which is almost a necessity when you have 18 frozen lasagnas to cook and 75 people coming.

Barb says that only a man would have made that kind of mistake, and she is in favor of more women in construction jobs. “Look at this, for instance,” she told me on our last visit. She pointed out that the new washer had been placed on the wrong side of the new dryer.

“What’s the difference?” I asked. “A woman would have seen instantly,” she said, “that the dryer door needs to swing away from the washer rather than toward it, so that clothes from the washer can be tossed into the dryer with one movement, rather than having to divert them around the dryer door.”

Oh.

I’m just glad she wasn’t there the day I told the nice gentleman where to place the washer and dryer.

Don’t ever play “Old Maid” with a woman.

Our power was off for over 30 hours from Friday afternoon until Saturday night, thanks to that wet and breezy visit to
Richmond by our unwelcome guest from the South, Ernesto.  When darkness fell upon the house Friday night, Barb set out to Strawberry Street to get us spinach-lasagna-to-go for dinner and came home to report traffic lights out along the way, limbs and leaves everywhere, and a crowded but festive restaurant filled no doubt with other souls escaping from darkened homes.

We had our delicious dinner by candlelight, lingering perhaps a little longer than usual since the atmosphere was so quiet and pleasant and since there was no reason to hurry to anything on television.  After dinner, Barb brought out a metal tray and loaded it down with lighted candles of all shapes and sizes and carried it to the living room, where they cast soothing flickering shadows on the walls as the rain poured down outside.  It was a night to make you hope that all the city was safely, warmly and pleasantly secure under cover somewhere—but also a pounding reminder on the roof that somewhere out there, folks were probably getting very wet.

For awhile we sat on the sofa, cat between us, and talked about all the things going on in our lives right now. Eventually I picked up my guitar and started playing rain songs: Tom Rush’s “Wasn’t it a Mighty Storm”; “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head,” “Little Cabin Home on the Hill” and so on. Then Barb went to find her mandolin and some music books, and there we sat, singing and playing until her less-practiced fingertips got sore and the evening got later.

It’s funny, when the lights go out, how much of the time is spent waiting for the lights to come back on.  Being in the dark when accustomed to electricity is a matter of great expectations. For some reason, we had both assumed that the loss of power would be very temporary.  The homes on the opposite side of the street had never gone dark, and their front porch lights encouraged us to think that ours, too, would be ablaze at any minute.  So basically we just sat and waited while everything in our freezer moved toward total thaw and everything in the fridge moved to total ruin. By Saturday afternoon when we were still powerless, Barb was lamenting that she hadn’t rounded up at least a few things and carried them across to a neighbor’s freezer—especially since she had just done a huge amount of “payday” grocery shopping the day before.

Periodically one of us would go down and check the basement, which blessedly seemed to be containing the downpour pretty well.  There were a couple of tiny ribbons of water making their way to the drain but—probably thanks to our new post-Gaston gutters—it was generally dry.

At 11, Barb put on the headphones to her Walkman and listened to Channel Six news on the radio. It didn’t seem too dire, and somehow it was almost a relief to learn that hundreds of thousands around the state were, like us, without power.  Ah, we are part of something big, then. The situation made a little more sense in that case.

“Let’s break out the Scrabble,” I said to Barb around midnight.  But the game wasn’t in any of its usual places and somehow we couldn’t find it.  “I did find the Old Maid cards, though, from when the kids were small,” Barb announced.

Let me make clear right away that I had never once in my life played Old Maid, though it quickly became clear that if one had ever mastered “Go Fish,” Old Maid would be a snap—or so it seemed.  I lost every game.  When Barb had the Old Maid and I was trying to avoid it, she would inevitably stick one card in her hand up high above all the other cards, and of course anyone with an ounce of sense would just know that couldn’t be the Old Maid.  But each time I acted on that theory and took that most obvious card, it was the Old Maid.  And each time I remembered that she got me with that trick last game and took another hidden-away card, darned if I still didn’t get the Old Maid. Which, of course, by game rules, made me the ‘Old Maid,’ time and again.

“Don’t ever play Old Maid with a woman,” Barb advised me, too little too late after I suffered four consecutive defeats.  “Women grow up on this game, and we’re hell-bent not to be the Old Maid.

“One reason,” she added brightly after a moment’s thought, “is that it’s the Old Maid’s job to clean out the mess in the fridge and freezer tomorrow.”