Notes from Maine - 2021/08/22

Henri is coming.

There’s a tropical storm headed up the East Coast that might evolve into a hurricane before it hits shore. Depending on the track, we might get clobbered here in Maine next Tuesday. I missed Hurricane Bob in 1991 (I was down in Virginia), but I was here for Gloria in 1985. We had tons of rain and warm air that felt like it had blown in from another dimension.

The worst storm I’ve experienced in Maine was dubbed “Ice Storm 98.” My grandfather died the year before, and I moved back in with my grandmother. Her name was Charlotte and we all called her Cha. At the time, my father had bought a house down the road but he still had renters, so he was living in Cha’s old farmhouse as well.

When the storm hit, I was working on a deadline. I don’t remember the project, but I remember that at the time I was programming all day down in Yarmouth and then driving home to program every evening. After the first night of icy rain, I got up and went to work despite the fact that our power was out. We had a generator and I had no idea how bad the storm was. I skidded all the way down to Yarmouth. On a good day, the trip took about an hour. With the roads covered in ice, it took me close to two. The building was empty. 

Only the owner’s brother was there.

“We’re closed today. Didn’t you hear on the radio?” he asked.

Of course I hadn’t heard. Up where I lived, we didn’t even get Portland radio stations. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. If I wanted to keep working at home, I had to grab a bunch of equipment from the office, so that’s what I did. On the way back north, I stopped at the hardware store to pick up the rug cleaner that I had reserved.

My grandmother had a new carpet in her living room and she was always worried that my dogs were getting it dirty. I had promised her that I would shampoo the carpet periodically. The hardware store was pure chaos. I walked in, dressed for my office job, to find people scrambling under emergency lighting, buying every battery and flashlight in the storm. They all seemed to know that it would be a while before things would return to normal. I’m sure the store sold every camp stove and lantern in their inventory that day. They also rented one carpet cleaner… to me. I got strange looks from everyone as I waited in line to rent it.

Back at home I cleaned the carpets with power from the generator and set up all my equipment so I could work. After returning the steam cleaner I finally settled down to make some progress on my project. I knew I was going to be up all night, but I actually thought maybe the storm was a blessing. There was no reason to commute to the office and I could completely focus. 

I had been working for less than an hour when the bomb went off.

That’s what it felt like. There was an enormous explosion and the house shook.

I ran down the stairs and found my father kneeling in front of my grandmother’s chair. His voice sounded low and mellow, but he was talking so fast that he didn’t draw a breath.

“Mother, it’s all fine. Mother, you’re okay. It’s all going to be okay, Mother. We all fine, and nothing happened to us. It was just a tree. Mother, can you nod if you can hear me?”

Her eyes were wide—unblinking. She was taking tiny, quick breaths. When one of my dogs panted like that, Cha would say, “He really has his motor running.”

Cha’s motor was running, but there was no color in her cheeks and no awareness in her eyes. The explosion—I still didn’t know what had caused it—had driven her into deep shock. I glanced to my right and saw that the living room carpet was glittering with tiny diamonds of glass. Minutes before, it had been spotless (freshly shampooed!) but now it was covered in fragments of wood, pine needles, and glass. On the north side of the house, one of the tall pines had snapped off halfway up under the weight of the ice. It had fallen over, hit the ground, and cartwheeled over sending the trunk right through one of the windows. The impact had splintered the sill and smashed its way down into the wall underneath.

Ice cold air was blowing in along with freezing rain.

My father and I ran to the shop. He grabbed the chain saw off the shelf and I ran ahead to see if I could clear the trunk without cutting it. I heard him pulling fruitlessly at the saw’s cord as I slipped across the ice and reached the tree. Through the window, the house looked like a warm oasis. Freezing rain pelted me as I put a shoulder under the tree and tried to drag it from our house. It was too heavy and the branches were spiked into the ice, holding it in place.

I backed up and saw a possible solution. If I could spin it, maybe gravity would do the work. I ducked under the tree and grabbed a limb, trying to free it from the ice. It moved slowly at first, dislodging and then spinning as the trunk began to slide down from the broken window sill. I only had to keep nudging it along. Everything went perfectly until it picked up speed. The next thing I knew, the trunk spun and one of the limbs rotated faster than I could react. I spotted it right before it hit the top of my head. 

The next thing I knew, my father was standing over me with the chainsaw. 

I had managed to twist the log until it dropped from the sill, but I also managed to knock myself out. He diced up the trunk so we could move it away from the house and I fit a piece of plywood into the hole where the window had been. The color returned to Cha’s face gradually. She caught her breath and asked me if we still had the rug cleaner. I had to tell her no—I had already taken it back. For a couple of hours, we tracked down glass in every corner of the living room. A few pieces even bounced into the hall. 

The power was out for eleven days. We survived with the generator. I’m not sure how other people managed. After a week without power, the fuel guy came to refill our propane tank. He commented that we were lucky that we were good customers. Panicked people were calling night and day, trying to get propane. The man revealed to my father that he and his friends were getting ready in case action needed to be taken. 

Action. 

The propane guy was part of a secret militia and they were preparing in case there was an uprising of people desperate to gain control of the strategic propane supply. 

It felt like a dangerous time.

The power came back on eventually and life gradually returned to normal. Trees were down everywhere. When the power bill arrived for the month of February, I scanned it closely, figuring it would only be 60% of the normal February bill. Instead, it showed the same consumption as the previous February except the was an asterisk next to the number and a note that said the amount of power was estimated since they hadn’t done any meter reading during the emergency. I called when the March amount was also equivalent to previous years.

I said something like, “I’m trying to make sense of why you show that we’ve used the same amount of power this year as last for the first quarter.”

Their response was, “People used extra power after the storm to get their homes back online—freezers, laundry, and such.”

I said, “But we didn’t need to get back online. We used a generator during the storm.”

They never did arrive at a satisfactory answer. Magically, CMP (Central Maine Power) always costs the same, whether you use the energy or not.

Anyway, here’s to hoping that Henri turns east before he reaches my house!