July 7 • Rain & No Electricity

At 6:30 AM, the electricity went out for two minutes. About three hours later, the electricity went out for good, shortly after the rain started. The usual scenario is that the electricity goes out on the north side of Oak Avenue. Only. This time is no exception, since lights were still visible on the south side of Oak. 

Another infrastructure thing. 

Imagine your entire power source is from one long extension cord hooked up to a neighborhood over a mile away. That's Com Ed's Rube Goldberg set up for the north side of Oak Avenue. That's the only thing that keeps our refrigerators, air conditioners, coffeemakers, microwaves, TVs, hair driers, stoves, etc., on the grid. We're only one wet wire away from melted ice cream and a bad hair day.  

Today we noticed something new. Two wires down at the corner of Oak Avenue and Cedar. We couldn't tell whether they were power lines or phone wires. No wind today.  But there were trucks in that area installing new telephone poles a few weeks ago. Today the whole corner was also wrapped in yellow crime scene tape to keep people and cars out of the area, but there were no service trucks around. 

The good news? The rain was only drizzle. 

[Action photo of downed wires below]

 We noticed after posting this picture that there is a village truck doing what we were doing when we encountered the yellow tape -- turning around. 

 The tape was wrapped around a tree, then attached to a sign, 

and blocked the street in three directions.

 We didn't know what the tape was for. Finally we realized that there were two downed wires off a telephone pole. At least we thought it was a telephone pole. 

We will go to any lengths to provide our readers with on the spot reporting when the first drop of rain falls. As long as we don't have to get out of the car.