EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW, I LEARNED IN A BLIZZARD

Well, there’s one thing about being trapped in a snowstorm with no lights and no TV: it gives you LOADS of time for reflection. In fact, while staring into the fire and enjoying a delicious meal of Reebok au gratin, I had an epiphany. Several epiphanies, as a matter of fact. Also three insights, two flashes of enlightenment, and half-a-dozen nervous breakdowns. So, dedicated scribe that I am, I grabbed a shovel and a piece of coal and wrote them down. Unfortunately, I lost all those notes when I used the shovel to whack the dog, who was trying to horn in on my place near the fire. But, as best as I can reconstruct it, here is a little piece I call "Everything I Need to Know, I Learned During a Blizzard" (coming this spring from Random House):

1. All time is relative. When two guys from Carolina Power and Light show up on Tuesday and tell you they’re going to be back, "in the morning", they don’t necessarily mean the next morning. Or the morning after that, for that matter. It’ll be morning somewhere when they get back, is what they mean. Maybe not in THIS time zone, but morning.
2. Satan is alive and well on Planet Earth, designing CP & L’s automated outage report system. How else can you explain a system that gives you instructions, then tells you to hold…then thanks you for holding…then thanks you for holding again…then tells you they’re too busy to talk to you and hangs up? It’s not Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hades, but it’s darned close.
3. It’s good to have neighbors.
4. It’s even better to have neighbors with chainsaws.
5. It’s better still to have neighbors with chainsaws and beer. (It doesn’t even have to be the same neighbors with the chainsaws and the beer.)
6. If you want something done right, do it yourself. If it hadn’t been for the above-mentioned neighbors with chainsaws, we’d probably still be stuck. (And if you’re wondering what role your Humble Columnist played in the aforementioned clearing, rest assured I was there to offer encouragement and sound advice.)
7. Chainsaws first, then beer. Not the other way around.
8. Neighbors with extra firewood are good, too (thanks again, Lee.)
9. Take pleasure in the simple things. The gentle play of light on untracked snow, the warm crackle of a fire in the hearth, the joyous laughter of little children on a snow day, are all things that we should take time to appreciate.
10. Those simple pleasures can really get on your nerves after a couple of days.
11. Keep trying. Just because the store is out of kerosene heaters one day doesn’t mean they won’t have any tomorrow.
12. Weather forecasting is not an exact science. Either that or weathermen are all idiots, I’m not sure which. All I can tell you is there are a few meteorologists who better not get anywhere near me when I have a big stick handy.
13. Finally, and this one is serious: I learned that it’s better to play straight with people. When someone’s job is last on your priority list (as Carthage apparently was for CP & L) then you should TELL them that, instead of shining them on with a bunch of happy talk about how they’re a "high priority" or that you’re going to have "90% of the people hooked up tonight". That sort of talk takes on a bitter taste when you watch the line of trucks roll right by your darkened neighborhood headed south for Southern Pines and Pinehurst. That sort of talk leaves you with an especially bitter taste when you drive all over your town and don’t see a single CP & L truck, then go south and see line crews crawling all over the more favored sections of the county, after receiving assurances that crews in your area are working "around the clock." Had we known CP & L was going to abandon us until everyone else was taken care of, we would have gotten out earlier, instead of spending night after night huddling by the fire in the dark waiting for the trucks that didn’t come. So next time, tell us the truth, so we know how to plan, instead of concentrating on your own PR.

Remember, it’s not the power, it’s the perjury.

COPYRIGHT 2000 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.