Hahaha! What a wonderful read! As a child things are always this strange mix of excitement and trepidation. I love that you’ve looked back at that time and shared it with us. So many feelings. How cool having this as record of that unforgettable few weeks. Thanks. Sending cooling hugs from frosty Australia. 🤗🤗🥶
Brrrrrrrr to your frost! Hope you’re keeping warm, Beth!
I often think back to that time - well, every time we have a power cut, actually. That happens pretty often around here - including just a couple of days ago WHILE JIM WAS IN THE SHOWER! 🤣 Poor chap! Luckily that was only two minutes rather than the two weeks I’d reported in my post, so all was well. 😅
Oh! Thanks for bringing this back, Rebecca. Loved your lights-out story and how your neighborhood and your family pulled together. British weather! In Ardnamurchan they say, "If you can see the lighthouse, it means it is going to rain. If you can't see the lighthouse it is already raining!" Across the water here, the weather has become so unpredictable, nature doesn't know what it's doing any more. Irises that usually bloom in March, waited until June. The Christmas camellia didn't even bother this year. We usually have fledgling sparrows and finches in March, but the small yard birds didn't even build their nests until April! However our tourists returned right on time! And that is what is important around here...
Thanks for reading it again, Sharron! I’m very behind on my own reading here on Substack, so you’ve made me even more grateful!
I love the Ardnamurchan story! In many souvenir shops around and about I’ve seen lengths of rope - or sometimes even seaweed - being sold together with a sign saying ‘if the rope (or seaweed) is warm, the sun’s out; if it’s wet, it’s raining; if you can’t see it, it’s foggy; if it’s moving, it’s windy; if it’s white, it’s snowing; if it’s stiff, it’s freezing.’ Bonkers, yet delightful. 🤣
Wonderful read this morning, Rebecca! Reminded me of my childhood back in the Philippines— blackouts after a typhoon and/or brownouts when the electric grid was overworked and had to be rationed. Oh, the candles! I used to play with the wax pouring it out and trying to shape it as I moved the paper underneath.Good thing I had the sense not to pour it on wood or the floor. 😱 I would’ve gotten into trouble!
I found candles fascinating as a child. I remember whenever there were candles at church that we’d get to hold - like at a christening, or any of the Christmas services - I’d ‘accidentally’ tilt it so that the wax would run down the candle and onto my fingers to make pretty shapes. I’m glad to report that I have since grown out of that stage. Safe is better. 😅
Thanks, Erika! I sometimes wonder how my brain keeps hold of stuff like this, honestly! 🤣
It pays to be careful with candles, as I so clearly wasn’t on that occasion! Good for you for being so safety conscious. I dislike matches, actually - we cook on a little gas stove in the campervan and I keep meaning to get one of those spark lighter thingies for it so I don’t have to mess around with matches.
My goodness, it's wonderful to read about someone's else's disaster emergency. I know. What a horribly unkind thing to say. We've had similar experiences with blizzards, earthquakes, wildfires. (Holy crap, Sue Move away from those places!) That's why it's called the Wild West. Meanwhile, I loved your story and how your community dealt with the crisis. Isn't it crazy how such events bring people together that normally don't see each other much at all? What a boon from that storm. And the dinner reminded me of that children's book, Stone Soup, where the starving community respond to three Napoleanic soldiers who put a stone in a cauldron of boiling water. Everyone digs into the larder and bring something for the soup. Thank you for this stoyr, Rebecca.
Thanks so much, Sue! And I love your stone soup story.
We get off jolly lightly over here, all things considered. Blizzards, earthquakes and wildfires - actually we do have the latter sometimes, on a smaller scale than in the States, though - aren’t really a thing over here. Our reaction to snow is wildly disproportionate to the volume of the stuff, though - everything STOPS when it snows, pretty much, apart from in the very north of the country, and in Scotland, where the infrastructure can cope with it.
Mind you, in 1836 there was an avalanche in the town where I went to school. There’s a huge grass slope on a chalk hill with houses right at the bottom - there’s a pub at the bottom, too, which is called ‘The Snowdrop’, named not after the pretty flower but after the fact that that’s where the snow landed. Eight people were killed. It’s the only avalanche worldwide to have ever happened at sea level, and it happened in the relatively warm south-east corner of England. Extraordinary!
That IS extraordinary, Rebecca. Snow at sea level is rare, but not unknown. It snowed one year in Santa Cruz, CA when we lived in that area. Even the coastal mountains got a good couple of inches of the stuff. You know, there's nothing "moderate" about California, including the weather. That storm killed or frost-bit a lot of trees, but never slid in such a way as to kill people. That's usually reserved for the torrential winter rains that soak the marine sediments of the mountains and cause landslides. Many portions of mountain highways are supported by bridges built agaisnt or into the hillside. It's nuts. I appreciate the bar existing all these years after the snow slide in your town. It was long ago enough that photos or even paintings don't record the event, but has anyone written anything about the disaster that wasn't just normal news stories? Poems or songs commemoriating the event? On another note, I wonder if a lot of the "crisis" reaction to climate change is because people are relying on data that may be misused, or something a bit off from their area's usual weather. That's a rabbit hole right there. But lately as I swelter in our very normal 90-100 degree F temps here, I think of the people living 150-200 years ago, working hard in these summer temps in their heavy long-sleeved clothes and no AC. "Gosh, it's a scorcher," they'd say, sitting around the pickle barrel in the general store. "Think it'll ever rain again?"
Gosh, now you've got me thinking! I'll see if I can find any writing anywhere about the disaster - that's so interesting, Sue. Thank you!
It's so interesting that over here our houses are built for warmth, not to keep us cool - when I read about the temperatures in some places across the pond I always thing 'wow, I hope they are as big on air conditioning as we are over here about our central heating!'
Depending on where in the USA, it can be benign or cold and hot temps throughout the year. Here, there is a daily differential of about 30-40 degrees between high and low, but that could mean in summer it's 55F in the morning and 95F in the afternoon. Same thing in winter: 5F and 45F.
Though the devastation and loss of life is so traumatic, it never ceases to impress me how communities come together at times like these. How long, altogether, were you without power? Shortly after we arrived at our current home, while we were still living aboard, a terrible ice storm came through, downing trees and robbing most of the peninsula of power for weeks. But not the hotel near where we were docked. So, not only did we not lose access to electricity, we were also well equipped with battery-operated lights, an oil lantern, and mini coal-burning stove, all of which were normal features in our old wooden sailboat.
What an experience that was for all of you. Your understandable discontent at the candlelit dinner is priceless!
Oh gosh, Elizabeth, that sounds like a very frustrating experience! Scary, too, the ice storm!
We were without power for two weeks in the end. We’d been lucky that the phone line had been repaired so quickly, so at least we had that. And by the end of the period without power we’d got into the swing of things rather better than at the start! 🤣
We can be adaptable creatures, it seems. We considered ourselves quite fortunate to be living aboard in the midst of our mess. All our needs met in that small space. My biggest fear was that our cat, who was prone to playing ice hokey, would fall through as the ice began to thaw. He went on to live a dozen years. :)
You remember such impressive details that were no doubt imprinted due to the fierceness and unprecedented nature of the storm and its many days aftermath. So glad you found your neighbours to be, well, neighbourly! And no lasting damage from the small conflagration. Yikes! No wonder you remember so many details! The Great Storm of 87...Thanks for sharing your version of the events - I wouldn't have even given it much thought in a news mention but NOW, I know all about it!.
I love this story. The communal meals were shared to salvage the bizarre combination of foods in neighbours’ fridges and freezers. The poor lamp -- poor you. 🥹 What an adventure. “Posh-for-us restaurant” yup I know it well. 😂 Wonderfully told.
This reminds me of hurricane Gloria here in New England back in the 80s. We had no power for 6 days. And 5 kids. And no water as we had a well.
Luckily we filled the tub with water so that we could flush several times a day.
We cooked on a camp stove outside, and went to bed early.
Another horrible storm happened when we got snow early and as trees still had leaves they either fell over, or dropped limbs. That caused power lines to snap and blocked roads all over. Another week with no electricity but at least this time I lived in a house that had city water so that was useful.
Oh gosh, that sounds pretty hardcore, Julie! And it’s an added trial when you don’t know how long power cuts and lack of water will last. Ulp!
I’m wondering, though, whether your kids still remember the aftermath of the hurricane, and what they felt at the time about ‘camping out’ in different-to-normal conditions? Happy memories, do you think, or more along the lines of ‘gosh, we hated every second’? I guess my experience was a bit of both!
I slept through the whole thing 😂
haha
🤣
Great piece. Nothing like bad weather to bring people together. Humanity at its finest.
Aww, thanks, Carissa!
Of course you did. Smart.
🫣 I don't blame you!
Hahaha! What a wonderful read! As a child things are always this strange mix of excitement and trepidation. I love that you’ve looked back at that time and shared it with us. So many feelings. How cool having this as record of that unforgettable few weeks. Thanks. Sending cooling hugs from frosty Australia. 🤗🤗🥶
Brrrrrrrr to your frost! Hope you’re keeping warm, Beth!
I often think back to that time - well, every time we have a power cut, actually. That happens pretty often around here - including just a couple of days ago WHILE JIM WAS IN THE SHOWER! 🤣 Poor chap! Luckily that was only two minutes rather than the two weeks I’d reported in my post, so all was well. 😅
Oh! Thanks for bringing this back, Rebecca. Loved your lights-out story and how your neighborhood and your family pulled together. British weather! In Ardnamurchan they say, "If you can see the lighthouse, it means it is going to rain. If you can't see the lighthouse it is already raining!" Across the water here, the weather has become so unpredictable, nature doesn't know what it's doing any more. Irises that usually bloom in March, waited until June. The Christmas camellia didn't even bother this year. We usually have fledgling sparrows and finches in March, but the small yard birds didn't even build their nests until April! However our tourists returned right on time! And that is what is important around here...
Thanks for reading it again, Sharron! I’m very behind on my own reading here on Substack, so you’ve made me even more grateful!
I love the Ardnamurchan story! In many souvenir shops around and about I’ve seen lengths of rope - or sometimes even seaweed - being sold together with a sign saying ‘if the rope (or seaweed) is warm, the sun’s out; if it’s wet, it’s raining; if you can’t see it, it’s foggy; if it’s moving, it’s windy; if it’s white, it’s snowing; if it’s stiff, it’s freezing.’ Bonkers, yet delightful. 🤣
ha ha ha!
Wonderful read this morning, Rebecca! Reminded me of my childhood back in the Philippines— blackouts after a typhoon and/or brownouts when the electric grid was overworked and had to be rationed. Oh, the candles! I used to play with the wax pouring it out and trying to shape it as I moved the paper underneath.Good thing I had the sense not to pour it on wood or the floor. 😱 I would’ve gotten into trouble!
Thanks, Stella!
I found candles fascinating as a child. I remember whenever there were candles at church that we’d get to hold - like at a christening, or any of the Christmas services - I’d ‘accidentally’ tilt it so that the wax would run down the candle and onto my fingers to make pretty shapes. I’m glad to report that I have since grown out of that stage. Safe is better. 😅
This was a great story! We lived in the San Francisco bay area, never much wild weather, only an occasional earthquake!
Oh blimey, at least we don’t have those! Scary stuff, Sue!
Yes, it can be :)
What a wonderful re-telling of your life without electricity. Love this, RH. ❤️
Awww, thanks, Mary! 😊
What a story, Rebecca! How do you remember these details so well? I'm amazed.
Also— that candle vs lampshade moment is precisely why it took me till age 25 to use a match and light my first candle. 🕯️😅
Thanks, Erika! I sometimes wonder how my brain keeps hold of stuff like this, honestly! 🤣
It pays to be careful with candles, as I so clearly wasn’t on that occasion! Good for you for being so safety conscious. I dislike matches, actually - we cook on a little gas stove in the campervan and I keep meaning to get one of those spark lighter thingies for it so I don’t have to mess around with matches.
The spark lighter thingy is magical!
My goodness, it's wonderful to read about someone's else's disaster emergency. I know. What a horribly unkind thing to say. We've had similar experiences with blizzards, earthquakes, wildfires. (Holy crap, Sue Move away from those places!) That's why it's called the Wild West. Meanwhile, I loved your story and how your community dealt with the crisis. Isn't it crazy how such events bring people together that normally don't see each other much at all? What a boon from that storm. And the dinner reminded me of that children's book, Stone Soup, where the starving community respond to three Napoleanic soldiers who put a stone in a cauldron of boiling water. Everyone digs into the larder and bring something for the soup. Thank you for this stoyr, Rebecca.
Thanks so much, Sue! And I love your stone soup story.
We get off jolly lightly over here, all things considered. Blizzards, earthquakes and wildfires - actually we do have the latter sometimes, on a smaller scale than in the States, though - aren’t really a thing over here. Our reaction to snow is wildly disproportionate to the volume of the stuff, though - everything STOPS when it snows, pretty much, apart from in the very north of the country, and in Scotland, where the infrastructure can cope with it.
Mind you, in 1836 there was an avalanche in the town where I went to school. There’s a huge grass slope on a chalk hill with houses right at the bottom - there’s a pub at the bottom, too, which is called ‘The Snowdrop’, named not after the pretty flower but after the fact that that’s where the snow landed. Eight people were killed. It’s the only avalanche worldwide to have ever happened at sea level, and it happened in the relatively warm south-east corner of England. Extraordinary!
That IS extraordinary, Rebecca. Snow at sea level is rare, but not unknown. It snowed one year in Santa Cruz, CA when we lived in that area. Even the coastal mountains got a good couple of inches of the stuff. You know, there's nothing "moderate" about California, including the weather. That storm killed or frost-bit a lot of trees, but never slid in such a way as to kill people. That's usually reserved for the torrential winter rains that soak the marine sediments of the mountains and cause landslides. Many portions of mountain highways are supported by bridges built agaisnt or into the hillside. It's nuts. I appreciate the bar existing all these years after the snow slide in your town. It was long ago enough that photos or even paintings don't record the event, but has anyone written anything about the disaster that wasn't just normal news stories? Poems or songs commemoriating the event? On another note, I wonder if a lot of the "crisis" reaction to climate change is because people are relying on data that may be misused, or something a bit off from their area's usual weather. That's a rabbit hole right there. But lately as I swelter in our very normal 90-100 degree F temps here, I think of the people living 150-200 years ago, working hard in these summer temps in their heavy long-sleeved clothes and no AC. "Gosh, it's a scorcher," they'd say, sitting around the pickle barrel in the general store. "Think it'll ever rain again?"
Gosh, now you've got me thinking! I'll see if I can find any writing anywhere about the disaster - that's so interesting, Sue. Thank you!
It's so interesting that over here our houses are built for warmth, not to keep us cool - when I read about the temperatures in some places across the pond I always thing 'wow, I hope they are as big on air conditioning as we are over here about our central heating!'
Depending on where in the USA, it can be benign or cold and hot temps throughout the year. Here, there is a daily differential of about 30-40 degrees between high and low, but that could mean in summer it's 55F in the morning and 95F in the afternoon. Same thing in winter: 5F and 45F.
Oh my goodness me! That’s extraordinary!
Nothing like a natural disaster to bring the neighbors together!
You’re so right!
Though the devastation and loss of life is so traumatic, it never ceases to impress me how communities come together at times like these. How long, altogether, were you without power? Shortly after we arrived at our current home, while we were still living aboard, a terrible ice storm came through, downing trees and robbing most of the peninsula of power for weeks. But not the hotel near where we were docked. So, not only did we not lose access to electricity, we were also well equipped with battery-operated lights, an oil lantern, and mini coal-burning stove, all of which were normal features in our old wooden sailboat.
What an experience that was for all of you. Your understandable discontent at the candlelit dinner is priceless!
Oh gosh, Elizabeth, that sounds like a very frustrating experience! Scary, too, the ice storm!
We were without power for two weeks in the end. We’d been lucky that the phone line had been repaired so quickly, so at least we had that. And by the end of the period without power we’d got into the swing of things rather better than at the start! 🤣
We can be adaptable creatures, it seems. We considered ourselves quite fortunate to be living aboard in the midst of our mess. All our needs met in that small space. My biggest fear was that our cat, who was prone to playing ice hokey, would fall through as the ice began to thaw. He went on to live a dozen years. :)
What a lovely story! And great sub-head 🤣
You remember such impressive details that were no doubt imprinted due to the fierceness and unprecedented nature of the storm and its many days aftermath. So glad you found your neighbours to be, well, neighbourly! And no lasting damage from the small conflagration. Yikes! No wonder you remember so many details! The Great Storm of 87...Thanks for sharing your version of the events - I wouldn't have even given it much thought in a news mention but NOW, I know all about it!.
LOL - thanks for noticing the sub-heading - we Brits are OBSESSED with talking about the weather!
I love this story. The communal meals were shared to salvage the bizarre combination of foods in neighbours’ fridges and freezers. The poor lamp -- poor you. 🥹 What an adventure. “Posh-for-us restaurant” yup I know it well. 😂 Wonderfully told.
Thanks, Linda! I think we rather enjoyed ourselves in the end - and I remember how delicious (and unusual!) our thrown-together meals were! 🤣
Yes summer camp was the best!
Oh my gosh! I'm so glad the candle only took out only the lamp. That must have been scary though. Great storytelling Rebecca. :) Thank you.
Thanks so much for reading, Julie! 😊
Always a joy of my weekend (or beginning of week if I get behind)
This reminds me of hurricane Gloria here in New England back in the 80s. We had no power for 6 days. And 5 kids. And no water as we had a well.
Luckily we filled the tub with water so that we could flush several times a day.
We cooked on a camp stove outside, and went to bed early.
Another horrible storm happened when we got snow early and as trees still had leaves they either fell over, or dropped limbs. That caused power lines to snap and blocked roads all over. Another week with no electricity but at least this time I lived in a house that had city water so that was useful.
Oh gosh, that sounds pretty hardcore, Julie! And it’s an added trial when you don’t know how long power cuts and lack of water will last. Ulp!
I’m wondering, though, whether your kids still remember the aftermath of the hurricane, and what they felt at the time about ‘camping out’ in different-to-normal conditions? Happy memories, do you think, or more along the lines of ‘gosh, we hated every second’? I guess my experience was a bit of both!
I think they loved it lol.