Something Winded This Way Comes

No, this isn't about out-of-shape Mrs. Hillbilly Mom trying to walk up the basement stairs.

Monday night/Tuesday morning, I left the sheet-struggle of the marital bed to make a visit to the master bathroom. I don't turn on the lights. The glow of dawn had not yet arrived. Squinting at the wall clock revealed a time of around 5:50 a.m. The clock itself was more like 5:58, but it runs fast.

I was a bit puzzled, because my bedside clock radio had reset itself to a different time. It's never accurate, but for a month now, I have been getting up at 2:30 by that clock radio time, which is actually 9:30 a.m. So I've become accustomed to telling time by that clock radio. Yet here it was, supposedly 5:50 a.m., and my clock radio said it was 1:00!

While on the throne, I heard a rumble of thunder. No rain. No wind. Just a little thunder. Totally weather-related, of course! So I thought that maybe the power had been off. I went to the kitchen to see if the microwave clock needed re-setting. That's a sure sign our power has been off. But it did not. The microwave clock said 5:55, as did my cell phone on the kitchen counter. Huh.

I went back to bed. I still had about 3.5 hours to sleep! Farmer H was up and gone before I arose. I vaguely recall him jouncing me while putting on his clothes bedside. I went about my morning routine. Called in my prescriptions. Wrote out a check for the phone bill.

I'd told Farmer H the day before that I would be taking the alternate route to town for a few days. The reason being that a semi truck had come at me on the straightaway to the low water bridge. I'd backed up into a driveway with T-Hoe's back tires, to let that semi come on up the road. It had gotten over as far as it could, and was stopped, waiting for me to pass. There wasn't enough room. I didn't want to drop two tires off the edge of the blacktop, because then we'd both be stuck there, blocking the road, until somebody could get there to tow me out.

Well! That semi driver turned on his flashing lights. Motioned me to come on. Then put on his turn signal. I guess he was going up that wide drive I was in. The owner has sewage dumped in one of his fields. I don't even want to go into that right now. Anyway, in my opinion, there was plenty of room in that driveway for this truck to make its turn. Then again, I drive T-Hoe, not a semi. In disgust, I backed all the way in, and turned to go the way I had come, back past Mailbox Row, across our own low water bridge, and towards town on the alternate route by the auto body shop.

When I came home, I again took the alternate. Good thing. Farmer H said later that he'd passed the regular sewage tanker truck, and the semi, on his way home about 30 minutes after me. Thankfully on a wider section of the blacktop road. Also, as I came up our own gravel road, I saw the ROCKERS down in the neighbor's field, a flatbed of (possibly someone's retirement nest egg) rocks already loaded, that had been mined out before and left at the treeline.

Anyhoo... Tuesday morning, I stopped for the mail, then turned left instead of right, to take the alternate route to town. I got about 1/4 mile. Then saw a flatbed semi ahead of me, blocking the blacktop road. Coming from the other direction, also stopped in the road, was another semi, with several vehicles behind it.

It wasn't their fault! In between them were two white county road trucks, with the man-lifts. They were working to clear a tree as thick as Farmer H from the road. I guess a storm had passed through! I'd seen some little limbs down in our front field, and on Farmer H and Buddy's Poorly Blacktopped Hill. I assumed that the ROCKERS had knocked down that one, with their big truck.

Once in town, I saw people buying bags of ice in Save A Lot. They lived a bit farther out, and said they'd been without power since early in the morning. They'd been told it might be restored by 2:00 p.m. I saw numerous police cars, some with sirens. More county road trucks headed out the opposite direction of town.

I am VERY HAPPY to have dodged the electricity-snapping bullet!