I had mixed feelings about power outages when I was a kid. All the rules changed in the dark. Dad said, “Don’t open the fridge,” while Mom lit candles, which were both spooky and mysterious, casting long, flickering shadows on the walls. My home was transformed into an eighteenth-century villa, and I wondered if this was what it was like before there were electric lights. What struck me as most sinister was how dark everything was. Not just dark…black.
One thing for certain is that there were never enough power outages when I was a kid, especially not ones that lasted long enough to really spark my imagination or fear or both. It seemed that the electric company got their act together around 1988 and put an end to major power outages in the Chicagoland area. At least until Monday, July 11, 2011, when, like several hundred thousand other Illinoisans, we lost our power due to the high winds and severe storms that morning.
I almost slept entirely through the storm. I briefly woke twice. Once to my wife running around opening all the windows, afraid the wind would blow them in or send something through them, and again to go to the bathroom, which was exactly the moment the power went out. The lights flickered on, off, on, off, blinking until they shut off altogether.
“Ahhh, they’ll be back on by the time I need to be up,” my half-sleeping mind thought, and I went back to bed.
An hour later I woke, the rain slowing to a trickle, the thunder distant and harmless, the wind dying to a gentle breeze. The house quiet, too quiet.
My wife was fast asleep. We’d been up late the night before with production duties, so now there was no one around to point out the obvious: the power was out. And, call it a premonition, I had a feeling it wasn’t coming back on soon, which shouldn’t have been a problem on most days. But this day wasn’t most days. No sir. This was production day, the day we produce the Sun Day.
I had a 24-page paper ahead of me, with a press time of 5 p.m. and no power.
First, I called ComEd with that trustee Hip Leach the cell phone. ComEd’s automated answering system told me that due to the roughly 200,000 people in our area without power, it could be DAYS before it would be back on.
I learned long ago in newspapers to not panic in a situation like this, but my heart started to race. Production always goes dangerously close to press time as is, but with a delay like no power, frankly, I thought I was in very bad shape. I quickly ran through the options: 1) I could quickly run to Best Buy (quick as in, wait an hour for them to open) and buy a battery back-up unit I could plug my computer in. (Of course, I’d have to first charge it before I could plug in, and I didn’t know where I’d do that, seeing that most of the people I knew in the general area were also without power.) Or 2) grab my entire computer and haul it to my parents’ house in Sun City and work on the paper there. No matter which way I turned it around, I was going to lose a big hunk of valuable time.
I then called Sun Day Assistant Managing Editor Mason Souza, who’s my current layout partner, to inform him of the delay and find out if he still had power. (Yes.)
“Sit tight,” I told him.
I sat there for a moment, reviewing my options. (The thought of either buying or renting a generator never crossed my mind.)
What did cross my mind was food. Just the day before, we went shopping, and we had about $150 of groceries in our refrigerator, the ice cream of which was already turning into the frozen foods version of bananas and going bad. I could hear my father’s voice from 25 years ago saying, “Don’t open the refrigerator.”
If the power didn’t come back on within 24 hours (so I thought, forgetting how old our refrigerator is), we were going to lose a good portion of the newly bought groceries.
Alas, I had a much earlier deadline on my hands: getting the Sun Day produced, which brought me back to my two options, Number 2 now seeming the most viable.
Twenty minutes later, I marched into my parents’ house with my computer under one arm (thank goodness I have an all-in-one) and a scowl on my face.
It was like being a teenager again.
Not too nicely, I said to my Mom, “My power’s out; I need to build the paper; I’m taking over the study today.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was working. And twenty minutes later, it almost felt like I’d never left home. My mom went about her business, my dad walked in the door whistling, a detail I had almost forgotten he did when he returned home, and me in an all-around foul mood, grinding out (in the Sun Day’s simplest definition) my writing work. It was 1994 all over again, and I was Odysseus for a day!
By 5:30, only a half-hour behind schedule, we were finished laying out the paper. (Here, I need to extend a special thanks to Mason, who put in a lot of extra effort and work that day to help me meet deadline, ensuring the Sun Day reached its readers without any delay.)
By 6 p.m. I was home, and by 6:15 I knew I was in for a long evening and night. The power still wasn’t back on, ComEd updated their automated system to an estimated time of They Didn’t Know, my refrigerator was already almost lukewarm, and my home was, ohhhh, about 100 degrees with humidity of, ohhhh, about 300%, it felt like. Swamps are more comfortable.
I went back out for ice, and my wife and I packed everything up in coolers, salvaging what we could in our kitchen before hauling the more valuable frozen meats to my parents’ house for freezer storage there.
When we returned home, flashlights in hand, we found our neighbor had lit the hallways in our condo building with these cheap little Dollar Store LED lights, one in the shape of a pineapple, the other in shape of a Hawaiian Indian mask, in case we wanted to throw an impromptu luau.
“Here, I bought you three,” our neighbor told us.
Inside, the little lights didn’t do much for ambiance, casting an alien blue glow that made you a feel sick to your stomach, but they did the job.
One of the biggest pros to a power outage is it gives you the license to eat at will. My wife and I feasted on a range of items we’d ordinarily not put together for any meal, but if there was a risk of it going bad, we dined like kings, making ourselves sicker in the process. But at least we saved a buck!
The remainder of the night passed without incidence and the following morning, I picked up the Sun Day from the printer and transported them to the mailing company as usual. Our ice melted by morning, so on the way home, I picked up three more bags, cursing the entire way home that I had to get through another day without power. A ComEd spokesperson the previous night said to plan for the power being out for days.
However, when I walked in my building, preparing to be greeted by the dark halls of caves, I found the lights were on. So there I was, standing in the hallway of our condo, three dripping bags of ice in my hands with nothing to use them for, and back in 2011 with working electricity.
