“I’m getting a generator today,” Susan announced Thursday morning.
“Baby, there’s not a generator for sale within a hundred miles,” I replied.
We were both right. As I was gathering all our dead electronics into a single pile to take to work so I could recharge them, Susan was searching for generators online. As the stack of drained laptops, phones, flashlights, and other devices grew, I could tell they wouldn’t all fit in my backpack. Instead, I grabbed a suitcase from under the bed and began stacking the devices neatly inside.
“I found a generator,” said Susan. “And paid for it. Now I just have to go pick it up.”
“But, I thought they–”
“In Denton, Texas,” she replied.
The Home Depot in Denton, Texas is 220 miles from my house. The generator they had in stock was bigger, more expensive, and had more bells and whistles than what we needed. That being said, it was in stock, and now it was ours. We just had to go pick it up.
“You go to work,” said Susan. “Charge all the things. I’ll be back this afternoon.”
And so I did go to work to charge all the things, and Susan returned home around 4:30 p.m. with a 200+ pound DeWalt generator in the back of her car. Mason, who has been staying with a friend while we’ve been without power, came home to give me a hand. My next door neighbor saw us working on it, and also came over to help. It took about an hour to get it assembled, oil and fuel added, and the whole thing up and running.
The first thing we hooked up was our home’s heater. We have a gas heater, so all that needed to be connected was the blower motor in the attic. We ran a heavy duty extension cord down the attic ladder out into the backyard, plugged it in, and the heater fired right up!
The next thing we plugged in was our refrigerator. The minute I connected it, the lights on the front of the fridge flashed and the ice maker began to make noise. Ultimately we lost everything in the refrigerator and freezer, but it would be nice to have it running again. Two for two!
Then I plugged the third extension cord into the generator and connected it to a power strip with only a lamp plugged into it. When I did, the entire house lit up. My first thought was, that’s some lamp!, and then I realized it wasn’t just the lamp that was lit up. Every light in the house came on at exactly the same time. I thought Susan had done something, she thought I had done something, and it took us about ten seconds to realize the power had just come back on.
Just to recap: Susan drove to Texas, paid a thousand dollars for a generator, and brought it back to Oklahoma. After getting the generator running, we connected two things two it. While connecting the third, our power was restored.
Buying a generator is a lot like fixing a hole in your roof. It’s no fun to fix when it’s raining, and there’s no motivation to fix it when it’s not. We’ve talked about buying a generator for years, but it’s tough to justify the money when there’s no emergency, and when there is an emergency, there aren’t any available. The next time power goes out for an extended period of time we’ll be ready, and if that doesn’t happen anytime soon, I’m okay with that, too.
If any of our local friends are cold or need things recharged, please let me know. I am off work today and will be working around the house, getting things back to normal.