I was pretty sure that today’s blog post would open with me talking about The Mountain getting grid power back — which we did, over 48 hours sooner than predicted. But shortly after Deb rolled down the driveway this morning, something more noteworthy happened.
And it made her late for work.
She rounded the bend and had to come to a stop — a whitetail doe had just given birth, and the wet-and-wobbly newborn was right in the middle of the road, struggling (naturally) to make it across.
Eventually, the fawn did get into the brush and tall grass on our side of the road. Mama was still dashing back and forth, however, and Deb wasn’t about to risk spooking her even more. And so she parked and sat still for a while, then inched carefully past the scene.
She was ten minutes late getting to work, but she had a genuine Country story to tell.
(Great photos from Deb, by the way. Can you see the fawn in the last two images of that gallery?)
We relaxed in our recliners after dinner (burgers, sweet corn and bean salad) last night. The generator chugged away outside, and the air conditioner hummed on the roof over our heads. Every now and then, even though I knew that power might be out ’til Wednesday night, optimistically I’d pull up Entergy’s outage map on my phone, just in case.
It was 8:30pm when I saw that our power line had turned from dead red to live green.
I didn’t say anything about it to Deb. I simply got up, turned off the AC (which I do when I refuel the generator), stepped outside and shut the generator down. I plugged the camper into grid power, then returned and switched the AC back on.
Still without explaining myself, I went back out to wrap up extension cords and such. Deb came to check on me.
“Everything ok?”
I just looked at her.
“Wait — do we…?” I could see her putting things together in her head. The air conditioner is running. The generator isn’t. She smiled.
“We have power!”
It had been 41 hours since Sunday morning’s tornadic storm knocked out our electricity. For us, it was no more than a minor inconvenience. Our preps were in place — power, water, food, lighting, fuel and so on — and we’ve had months of practice living off-grid. We took this relatively brief outage in stride.
The generator is stowed again. We’ll replace the eight or so gallons of gasoline we burned, and we’ll top-off the camper’s fresh-water tank. We’ll take note of what we learned this time — there are always lessons — and get ready for next time.
Looking around my community today, at least virtually, I could see that people are sobered. Deb reported observing the same at the bank. The tornado that scraped across north-central Arkansas early Sunday morning left one of those indelible marks — what doesn’t happen here, happened here.
Marion County is home to fewer than 17,000 people. Folks know each other, see each other at the hardware store and the rib joint and the courthouse. Ripples don’t have far to travel.
There will be no racing at the speedway this Friday night, out of respect for the community. Our vet clinic posted a tribute on Facebook this morning to the 73-year-old Baxter County woman who died, a favorite client of the practice. A fund has been set up to help the young son of the woman who perished in Olvey.
Over and over again, I saw ordinary folks stepping forward to donate, to shelter and feed, to help in small ways.
“Oh, the stories I’ve heard today,” Deb messaged me this afternoon. “I need a good cry.”
Folks ’round here don’t have to be schooled in how to be neighbors.
I know these people. I grew up with them — over 50 years ago and 800 miles from The Mountain.
It’s Country. It’s small-town America. Goodness lives here.
Coming back into Marion County over The Mighty White this evening after (finally) getting our laundry done.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB