Well Tim, I'm baaaaack.
You have forced me into telling another story, so you must suffer the consequences. I hope you are siting down and have good supply of crying towels on hand. Close on hand.
When we first heard of a strong Nor'easter coming up from the Gulf that could bring a sizable quantity of very wet and heavy snow, we New Englanders just sort of sighed and figured we might have a couple of days of inconvenience. I subscribe to a private weather service who is more often dead on the money than he has been wrong. This man had predicted the possibility of very extreme conditions atleast a week and a half before the media services had even thought there would be a little wind coming along, let alone any precipitation. no matter, i felt i was prepared. we had survived to "huricane" of late August. Here in our house, my wife & i had done quite well with only being out of power and phone for 8 hours shy of 7 full days. we could do it again if need be. I had spent a period of my youth living with no electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. when we first moved into our home here in Connecticut, we heated our entire house with wood for over 20 years until THE BOSS LADY decided to hire a heating contractor o put in a central air heating system. That was a sad day for me when i came home to find a crew of furnace and sheetmetal guys tearing up my cellar. I loved heating witth wood which was sort of a by product to my landscaping business. I was sad, but really, this is not the sad part of my story.You can relax for now.
I have a sno plowing biz that keeps food on the table thru the winter. During the final day before THE storm (you have to go back to 1804 to find a sno of more than an inch or so in October >>> in Connecticut.) I started receiving phone calls from some of my hardier customers to "Do not plow us for this storm. It will only be a little bit and will melt." In the meantime, my son and i were busy preparing our trucks for a severe storm, expecting maybe 8" that could be a problem for everybody since many trees were still heavy with leaves and sap. My guru had sent his final report of the day ahead with a map showing that we were right smackdab in the middle of an expected 10" to 16" with local amounts to as much as 20 inches to be expected. I won't bother going into the horrors of listening to trees snapping and falling in the woods around our house, but we had 10's on the grund when i walked out to my truck at 5AM in the morning. My birch trees were horizontal and i could barly see my truck. all there was was a huge mound of snow to be seen. I cleared the front windshield and the hood and went back into the house to call my son. i had decided we should wait til daylite before going out to plow. We knew there would be many problems ahead with trees all over the roads and wires along with poles creating need for many detours.
i spent some of my waiting for daylite time firing up the old woodstove, drawing containers of water for toilet use over next week and clearing a narrow path to my wood supply. I had enough dry seasoned oak to keep the stove going for maybe 4 days. Once daylite arrived, the sno plowing adventure began. We had never plowed driveways in October, but we were destined to spend between 8 and 10 hours plowing for this one. Oh, yyou don't need to reach for the cryin' towels yet. the next few days were actually fun >>> for me. I loved the cooking on the stovetop, collecting sno to keep the fridge cool so we did not lose one ounce of food. A challenge, but fun >>> for me.
The Boss was getting a bit edgy tho. She was admonishing me that I should get a generator, a commodity that was all but gone from any such stores that sold such articles. i was enjoying the challenge and so had not spent a whole lot of energy searching around for any old electricity making equipment that might have been lying around somebody's yard awaiting to be put to use. Besides, there were so many generators blasting away around us that we could not hear ourselves. I especially was thankful i could not hear BOSS LADY yelling for me to find a generator. finally I was beginning to run out of fire wood after about four days. My wife told my son that i was about to go out into the woods and start cutting branches into fire wood. The wood was not seasoned after only four days of lying on the ground. not great for cooking and heating, but what did I care, i would be warm cutting it [cool].
At about sundown, my son showed up with about a wheelbarrow load of seasoned and split wood just the right size for my wood stove. The wood, having been stored uncovered outside, was a little wet on the surface. Not a big problem. An hour or two under the stove before loading to the fire, and it was fine. By the time i brought the first pieces into my woodbox I reallized :'( :'( :'( the wood, so carefully split small enough for the woodstove [scared] [scared] [eek] [eek] [eek] [eek] :'( was all WALNUT [eek] [eek] [eek] :'( :'( I don't know about you, but I needed more than a towel. i needed a whole bucket.
I would not go so far as to say I was upset with my son, but he is very lucky he will be around long enough that his son will one day be able to give him such a hard time. :
Anyhow, we all survived. I have never seen such devastation from any Connecticut storm of any kind as we saw this October. Many were very upset. for me, and even my dear wife, the challenge was fun >>> part of the time. My big problem was not the no running water, no electricity and other problems, but i could not spend any of my out of work time playing with my toys down in my woodshop (maybe you did not cry over my horror of burning walnut in my stove. Maybe you did not cry about our storm related problems, for which i did not cry, BUT please tell me you cried with me when i could not play with my toys. :
Tinker
