WINTRY MIX

The cats and I had just gotten arranged in our fur and flannel pile for the night and were drifting off on the tide when the carbon monoxide monitor screamed. It won’t stop until it’s pulled from the outlet, so the three of us blundered to the kitchen, bumping into each other, to stop the horrible noise. My kitchen has a big picture window facing east. It looks down a long alley to the edge of town where the land swells up a bit so that it looks like what I tell my visitors is the end of the earth. The joke is that just over it is a missile silo. No one knows whether or not it has been decommissioned.

Right then light flared in a huge explosion and then a lot of pulsing flickering. I called the sheriff’s 911 in Conrad. She already knew: a power line had gone down. The frost for the last week has been thicker and thicker, thicker than I’ve ever seen it anywhere but Saskatoon. It’s not soft but rather little crystalline spikes so narrow and pointed that the effect from a bit of distance is ermine fur or maribou. For a week or so the sky was white cloud reflecting snowcover, not quite so warm as freezing, fog blurring distances and at night, lit by the street lights, glowing vaguely pink. And then that frost on everything. We knew a power event was likely.

But they’ve been more likely since the transformer a ways to the south, blew up in what must have been a more spectacular fire last fall. As it turned out, the installation was so old that it could not be replaced from ordinary stockpiles and once the basic transformer arrived, the connections to the system were old and had to be adapted by young repairmen not used to the protocols. Things work okay in the best of times, but Montana weather only passes through the best on its way to extremes. Our most common forecast is “variable,” although this time of year the forecast is likely to be “wintry mix.” No one has been able to design a robust enough electrical system to withstand the extremes and if they DID, the money to make it a reality doesn’t exist.

In Montana when electricity crashes we first curse Northwestern, a skinflint power provider in the Dakotas determined to squeeze out a good return on their investment in what used to be Montana Power, whom we curse second for their greed-crazed sale of our solid homegrown business so they could convert the remnants to unreal dreams of becoming cyber-millionaires overnight.

Valier is on a “three-legged” system which you’ll have to research. I did in the last blackout but I’ve already forgotten what it took me an hour to figure out. But it was not entirely a mental blackout because I do remember sort-of, a mental brown-out, which is what results when one leg of the three goes out. The lights are on but dim. This partial power is deadly for small motors which should be turned off at once to avoid burnout: the fridge, the VCR, the microwave, and so on.

In a while I could see that the fire had gone out and then work lights came on out there. I’m always grateful I’m not a lineman. They are the bravest and toughest of workers, going up poles in the worst weather and dealing with power sources that are only a little less than bombs. Small whines were coming from the household equipment. I went to unplug them. Most are on a constant “trickle” of electricity to keep them from having to warm up because we Americans are in a hurry. People really interested in saving electricity put their stuff on bar outlets, not to provide fuses for them so much as to be able to turn a whole set off with one toggle at night or when gone for a while.

My faithful old gas floor furnace kept warming us. It heats by convection and a mechanical contact breaker that works by expansion and contraction. Every time the Northwestern man comes to help me (he’s VERY good about it) he suggests an “efficient” system with a proper furnace and ductwork, but a) I can’t afford such a thing and b) when the electricity is off, the fans and electronic controls can’t work. (My backup for gas is a woodstove in the garage. Not a generator.)

Back to bed. By 4AM I could get up and plug the fridge back in. At 9AM I started my day at the computer and finished my blog post a little late, after eleven. The computer had been off -- I don’t leave it on at night, which frustrates the automatic stuff that is normally done over the Internet to clean and maintain it. (An eMac.) I had to find and install some freeware that will do the same thing from inside the machine. But it was fine.

Then there was a power blink, I presume related to repairs. We have power blinks all the time. They turn the radio off, which is a drag. But the computer didn’t react, so neither did I. Ten minutes later another blink killed the computer. Black screen. No restarting.

Into the pickup. At Jack Smith’s gallery the power line break had killed his heater, the “campfire” alongside which he creates his mountain man replica equipment. His computer survived. The repairman was already so backed up on calls that it would be afternoon. Jack had deadlines. He was not cheerful. He’s one of the successful businesses in town.

I crossed the street to the town hall. We have a new mayor and she’s pretty hip. I made my pitch that no amount of exhorting small towns to develop small businesses will succeed unless there is a stable power source that doesn’t destroy equipment. (Last time it took out the expensive embroidery machines which are the basis of Pony Expressions.) Northwestern is selective and secretive about paying off insurance claims. Even reimbursement can’t compensate for lost time, broken deadlines. Valier and every other small town must begin to inquire and protest, educate itself and supervise the politics of maintenance. Big corporations respond mostly to numbers, so we should turn to moral pressure.

I went home and called the Great Falls Tribune. The outage was noted in a couple of small paragraphs today. This was not a failure. The reporters now know about it, there is a public record of it, and another bb is put on the scale of public opinion. When I got off the phone, I unplugged my computer, went off to do other things for a couple of hours, came back, replugged into a different outlet on the breaker bar, and the screen came alive. Luck? Benign neglect? I believe in it for machines more than for corporations.