What do you do at 4 a.m., that is, with the power out, and you (make that me) unprepared?

Skillfully navigating a power outage is a point of pride for modern-day Mainers. “Of course, we have a generator,” they tell you smugly. You know, as the grid goes blink-blink-blink-OUT, their system goes click-BACK UP AND RUNNING, the fridge keeps humming, the computer hiccups and resumes computing. That’s not my house. It’s barely making a sound in these hours before dawn, just the occasional crackle from the cookstove and the soft purr of the teakettle simmering on top. A house unplugged.

It’s been 24 hours since the loud crack of the pole snapping across the road plummeted us back into the 1930s, the decade when Lincolnville was finally wired. It’s taken me that day and night to find a little peace with this new (and oh, how I hope!) temporary situation.

The sink is piled high with three days of dishes. I make a silent vow to never again leave dishes overnight, vow to clean the lamp chimneys before storing them away this time, to keep the wicks trimmed and to remember where I put the lamp oil.

When it finally got light enough yesterday, and we could see the damaged transformer, hanging nearly upside down by a splinter on the broken pole, the wire to the house draped over the car in the driveway, my first thought was “Oh good. They’ll get right after this.” CMP can’t leave wires down on a main road, can they?

It was a freaky thing. A tree had come down two poles away from our transformer pole, landing on the wires, and pulling them so taut our pole snapped.

I was wrong about the gravity of our situation. CMP had bigger fish – and bigger messes – to fry. A huge old pine had come down onto Slab City Road “across from Arthur’s” I heard, that being where Arthur Collemere’s house used to be until it was burned and bulldozed away several years ago. A nice little local touch that.

So the tree guys and CMP had their hands full. We spent an amusing morning, sitting in the sunroom with a perfect view of the ruined pole and wires draped across the road as vehicles, ignoring the cones and road-closed barricades at the Beach and at Slab City corner, came through anyway. Some were cautious, turning around at the top of Sleepy Hollow, others carefully went onto the shoulder and under the wires, while a few just barreled through as some always do.

The offending tree, the one that had started the chain reaction, was suspended in the wires beyond our house, its top branches brushing the road. One guy came along, took a look, got out of his pick-up, chain saw in hand, and decided to clean things up. We watched in horror, well, in fascination really, as this guy from Tennessee (we could see his plates) stood in the middle of the road right under the tree, and for all anyone knew, live wires, and cut it off. Held the chain saw directly over his head; the only place that tree could go was on top of him.

He jumped out of the way as it came down, the whole top apparatus of the large tree, leaving the main trunk still resting on the wires. Two poles down we watched our precariously situated transformer bounce up and down, slipping even further. A debate raged around the table; was the guy an idiot or a hero? Since he survived, and apparently did no more damage, clearing the road for cars to pass, one of our group voted “hero”. The others were still firmly in the idiot camp. Didn’t every one know that “NO WIRE IS SAFE TO TOUCH, EVAH!?”

When the official tree crew finally came, accompanied by CMP, they were taken aback to hear how the tree came to have its top sawn off. Of course, we’d run out front to tell them and to ask when would we get our power back. Hard to tell, they said, as they always do. One guy took pity on us, saying, “Rumor has it they’ll bring a new pole tonight.”

He was right, they did, but it went to Arthur’s on Slab City, not Sleepy Hollow.

How is it that a line down on Beach Road doesn’t affect a whole lot of other houses? Because this house is a spur off the “new” (twenty-year-old) high line that goes down 173 from the substation on Searsmont Road to Point Lookout to Islesboro via Ducktrap Road. Exactly one house was affected by that falling tree: my house.

This is the 35’ high line that prompted a good deal of cutting, and a good deal of protesting at that cutting, when it was first being installed. As one of those protestors (Save Our Trees!, sneaking around at night, dressed in black, to wrap fluorescent tape around the threatened trees),  how we enjoyed that brief moment re-living our youthful protests!

But thanks to the hard work at the time of Rosey Gerry and especially, Will Brown, the cutting was kept to a minimum, saving several old, roadside trees. Rosey was the public voice, talking to reporters and even TV newsmen when they ventured into Lincolnville, while Will was tireless in searching the internet, to see how other areas, other electric companies kept wires and trees apart.

He discovered alley arms, the cross piece at the top of the pole that carry the wires. CMP said they could only install them as a cross, but Will found cases were the arm was installed at a right angle to the pole, which moved the wires closer to the road and away from the trees. Next time you’re on 173 or Ducktrap Road look up and you’ll see all the places where CMP, grudgingly at the time, added the extra piece these alley arms required. And so saved many trees.

For all my indignation at the time, I’ve actually been a beneficiary; the new line, has been quite reliable. Those of us served by it rarely lose power.

That may be why I’ve grown complacent about staying prepared for long outages. Plenty of people aren’t so lucky. From the three weeks out that High Street and others endured during the 1998 ice storm, to the two weeks South Cobbtown Road experienced a few years ago, it’s no wonder so many houses are now equipped with generators.

Long outages bring people together, the ice storm most notably. Remember how in that pre-cell phone winter people all over the state used local radio stations to stay in touch with each other? CMP workers delivered box lunches to all the folks on South Cobbtown one day into their two-week ordeal.

It takes me a full day to accept the reality as the voices in my house go silent, that constant, day-long chatter of cable news I’ve come to rely on since finding myself alone nearly three years ago. Never mind that five other people live upstairs, people I love. And as it happens, a friend is spending a few days here as well, recovering from surgery. We’re quite a group. We sent the three children to school yesterday and my son left for work, leaving his wife (whose car was draped with that potentially live wire), the rehab patient, and me to hold down the fort.

We spent Saturday sitting at the front windows watching drivers negotiate our wires. We debated the Tennessee chain saw guy, knitted, drank coffee, and kept an eye out for those lovely, big utility trucks. When finally we spotted a new pole coming up the hill we were thrilled; next, an hour or two later, the truck with the cool hole-drilling auger showed up.

Ten minutes into the drilling and they gave up, saying they’d hit ledge and we’d have to wait for the special, rock-busting drill rig. It finally came with a crew of two guys; we watched them all afternoon trying one spot after another, but either the ground was too soft or the rock too hard. At one point they got their drill stuck on a ledge of bedrock several feet down and spent what seemed like hours trying to get it free.

The sun was setting when they finally succeeded, leaving a handsome, new pole standing 35 feet tall. Dusk was coming, and it had been hours since we’d seen an actually utility truck with a crew that could hook us up. I took a drive around town, ostensibly for a bottle of milk (I lie; for a bottle of wine), and made a circuit of Lincolnville to see if CMP was still in town. Not a sign of them.

We’d settled in for another night; Don came up to keep us company, nice of him since his house had lights, heat, and running water. We sat around the table with various lanterns and flashlights, Ed came home with pizza, as adults and kids played heated games of Rummikub, when lo and behold, a flotilla of utility trucks came up and down the road from all directions.

In half of an hour, those guys, who’d probably been working non-stop all day, were up in buckets, two or three of them, tacking our transformer up in place, pulling wires, connecting things, as we sat transfixed.

When everything was done, one guy went to our box, pulled a switch or whatever they do, and Sleepy Hollow was humming again.

NOTE: Though I refer to CMP throughout, these workers in Lincolnville were from Holland Electric something or other. I can’t remember the name of the company, but I assume they contract with CMP.

Election Day

Two state referendum questions will be on Tuesday’s ballot:

#1: Issue Do you favor a $105,000,000 bond issue to build or improve roads, bridges, railroads, airports, transit and ports and make other transportation investments, to be used to match an estimated $137,000,000 in federal and other funds?

#2: Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to allow persons with disabilities to sign petitions in an alternative manner as authorized by the Legislature?

The polls will be open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the gym at t he school.

Library

In addition to Needlework on Tuesday, 4-6 p.m., and Watercolor Journaling on Wednesday, 4-6, there’s a Wednesday evening presentation at 7 p.m.

Vietnam veteran Jack Flowers will talk about his novel "Rat Six" 

based on his own experiences as a lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers 1st Battalion, it tells the story of Clifford Price, leader of a courageous team of American soldiers in Vietnam known as tunnel rats. Trained to navigate and fight in a labyrinth of underground tunnels, the men face incredible danger and what at times seems like insurmountable fear while carrying out their many harrowing missions.  

After the war, Flowers earned a degree in Mathematics and Economics and worked as a stockbroker and investment banker on Wall Street. He is now semi-retired and living in Auburn.