Tried to get this up yesteday...Blogger was blocking me out!
Saturday afternoon, while working here at my computer, I heard a house-shaking ZUUUUUT, and then the lights went off. Momentary power failures, following a loud thump from the junction box in front of our house, happen 3 or 4 times a year, and I figured this was one them. The power usually comes back on in minutes, or less than a minute, and it came back on almost instantly this time. I resumed work, but as soon as my eyes had relocated the passage I was reading, the ZUUUUUUT! thundered out and left me in the dark again. This repeated a few more times, so I went outside to take a look around. I smelled something burning, and saw smoke coming from the woods across the road. Then came the noise one more time, along with a searing flash from behind the tops of my blue spruces. I moved to where I could see the woods unobstracted, and then I saw it head-on: with the next ZUUUUUT, a blinding, blue-orange fireball burst from the top of a power pole, stretcthing like a balloon toward the road below. Pine branches blazed again after its retreat.
This was scary stuff, happening about 100 ft, from my living room. I did have the impulse to get my camera to see if I could capture the fireball, but then thought perhaps moving in for a close-up of it might not be the wisest thing I could do. My neighbors were on their lawn with their phone out, calling the power company and the fire dept. They told me this had happened a few years ago. That probably explains why I looked across the road one day to see a pine tree that had always looked healthy to me appear scorched at the top--must have happened while we were away for a day, or a weekend.
The firemen arrived first, saw that the flames in the trees were dying out, and moved on. The power must have been turned off pretty quickly, since the jolts and fireballs stopped, but we didn't see any power company trucks come around until much later at night. And we had a very quiet night-my wife stayed home and sewed her halloween costume (Mrs. Butterworth) by candlelight, I went to a coffeehouse to grade some papers, joining, to judge from a few snips of conversations I overheard, other blackout refugees who had come there to read, play boardgames, or surf the net.
So by the end, the event was just a routine blackout, but it started with a bang I'll be seeing in my memory for some time. Among things things accessible by natural sight, few could provide a better referent for the term "phantasm." Detroit Edison--next time you want to stage a Halloween pageant, do it on someone else's street.
And speaking of hot things that fizzle out...how about those Tigers?
I actually did see and hear much of the game Friday...my nephews went to the bar of the restaurant where my Dad's birthday was held regularly to bring back updates from the TV. And on the way home, Kristine and I listened on the radio. By the the last innings, a sense of doom set in. The lead was never really out of reach, but it didn't seem like the Tigers had the stuff to close the small gap there was. As soon as the last out came, we switched off the radio.
Maybe I'm projecting, but I thought I sensed a little gloom in the air most everwhere I went, yesterday. A bit like after the 04 election (at least in the places I was spending time then). A series win would have been great, but I'm still proud of the boys for the season they had. According to the post-mortems I read yesterday in the Free Press, the players were taking the loss well, and voicing an eagerness to get back into the hunt next year. Given their overall youth, and the performance they put in this season, they have every reason to look for great things down the line. I'll be looking for them too. See you in April, fellas.
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