The Cowardly Lion and the Roaring Generator: it was a dark & windy night
Yesterday afternoon, the wind howled and wailed, clamoring at our windows and doors, trying to let herself in like an uninvited party crasher.
I had run through a litany of excuses for why I didn’t need to go to the grocery store, and believe me, if I can present enough logic, I’m pretty good about convincing myself to just stay home.
Reluctantly, I drove the 7 miles to the grocery store, weaving my car around fallen tree limbs and rollicking recycling bins that were experiencing newly found freedom.
As I pulled into a parking spot in Hunt Valley, I received a courtesy text message from BG&E that our electricity was out.
I grabbed groceries at Wegman’s and take-out dinners from Cava. When I arrived back home, the power was still out. I headed down to the barn to make sure our horses were ok; they are not fans of some of Mother Nature’s antics. When it’s windy, they believe there’s an invisible monster on the loose.
Inside our home, Ron had lit a few oil lamps and had rounded up an arsenal of flashlights. We enjoyed a quasi-romantic dinner and then we bundled up and headed outside to unleash our new generator.
Living on a farm, having fresh water is crucial. When the power goes out, that renders our well-pump nonoperational, and therefore no running water for ourselves or our horses and pets.
We bought the Westinghouse portable generator last year; this would be our first time using it.
This is a solid piece of equipment, very heavy, and despite my attempts to transform my stick-like arms into sinewy musclebound masses, it became clear that I would not be able to move this generator from our barn up the slight rise to our house by myself. OK, that sentence by itself will have my husband howling with laughter. Me? Set up a generator, where I have to pull it up a hill while profusely apologizing to Mr. Oak Tree as I try to roll the wheels over his thick tree roots? Um, no.
It’s 8pm, the windiest night of the year, I’m decked out in my Carhartt coveralls and thinking if this doesn’t work, I will be sleeping in this heavy-duty onesie. Ron is flipping some switches. I busy myself with reading the warning messages plastered on the generator. I’m standing at the exhaust-end of the machine, ingesting the ominous reading material. And that’s when the generator roared to life.
I was so startled; I felt like the Cowardly Lion doing the dive out the window of the Palace of Oz. I had strategically thought ahead, setting my camera up on a tripod to record our adventure; these are the images of me as soon as the generator kicked in:
In reality, I lost my balance, my footing caught on the garden tie. When I realized I wasn’t on fire and Ron hadn’t really noticed, I quickly stood up straight and pretended nothing happened.
For the next hour or so, I couldn’t stop laughing at the visual of me assuming the posturing of the Cowardly Lion. As for our Westinghouse WGen9500DFc generator, it was quite courageous, braving Mother Nature’s whims and provided reliable backup power, keeping our lights and heat on and our water running.
