Westborough
Fetching co-eds (bring me my slippers) Melanie and Hanna Bliss, lounging in the front yard on a hot Saturday summer night, were more than startled to see and hear a great electric arc light emanate from the side of their Westborough home just before midnight.
|
At the same time, the lights blanked out in half the house. It seems that the electrical box that housed the electric meter had been damaged when the electric company had plugged in a new meter, leaving one wire from the main lines dangling free. In the cool of the evening, that wire bent just enough to touch the housing and create the giant sparks.
Had it continued, the house could have caught on fire but apparently the force of the sparks cleared enough of an air gap that the arcing discontinued.
Emergency calls to a one-hour electrical contractor produced results about two hours later and the unsecured wire was made safe for the evening. The next day, being Sunday, nothing happened at our end. The contractor searched their many warehouses to find a replacement box, but apparently, ours was "special". We'd have to wait until Monday when the stores were open. Meanwhile with one of the two feed wires disconnected, about half the outlets and fixtures in the house were without power. It was not until Monday that the repair was completed and power restored.
Sunday night the kitchen was out of service hence…
|
|
Westborough
With no electrical power to half the Bliss house, it was an adventure routing power to the freezer and the microwave, etc. The main problem was an excess of dark in inconvenient areas (like ALL the bathrooms). In the Memama wing, the only power was to a night light.
We set the old propane camp stove on the electric stove, and decided we would not let the evil forces of the universe stifle us. We boiled potatoes and made up a turkey, stuffing and gravy compote that was going to be delicious, and then I (the Dad) made the near-fatal mistake. I had forgotten that one never puts a Pyrex dish over an open flame.
Take if from me, don't do this. This is not a suggestion. I'm not kidding, don't do it.
 |
By great fortune, no one was near at the moment, but your combined reporter and perpetrator was looking right at it when, BOOM, the Pyrex dish literally exploded. If only film were running at the time! The deep round dish exploded exactly like a Speilberg special effect, fragmenting into a jillion small pieces and expanding outward in a doughnut-shaped expanding cloud of particles - very much like the remake of the explosion of the Death Star. When described to nearby co-eds, they responded with, "Cool."
Again, luckily, the force of the explosion was low enough that the glass only traveled a foot or so in the air and not a single person was struck by glass. However, the glass chunks rebounded all over the hard floor and surfaces so that glass was in everything. We could not be sure that any open item was uncontaminated, so the full dish of completed mashed potatoes, the open box of cornstarch, and many other things had to be thrown out.|
|
Deepest Savannah
A couple of days later, it was time to drive Hanna to start school at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah Georgia. The plan was a leisurely drive down in Bruce - the maroon mini van, unload Hanna and possessions into the dorm, then Vicki would enjoy a few free days on the road to see the coastal countryside on the way home and get some feel for the Carolinas.
 |
But it wasn't to be. The rigors and terrors of two ten-hour days of driving, including the suicidal New Jersey Turnpike, terminated in the car showing engine distress during the last fifty miles into Savannah; a place where apparently no service stations are permitted by law. By the time help could be found, the engine had already gone even further south.
We have yet to hear the full ugly details of the unloading of the van, the Hell's Angels convention in the motel, and the struggle to get a two-wheel dolly plus jumper cables and other bulky car paraphernalia onto an airplane for the ride home, but Vicki did it. The car was finally donated to charity, and somewhere a little set of kidneys is thanking us.
Bruce is gone now, but we still have the removable seat and a full set of headrests sitting in the garage (those very same headrests that the downstairs toilet had overflowed-on when Dad was in Michigan.)
After she got home, Vicki fell off a horse going over a jump. It seems almost anti-climactic.