The Bright Side Early on the morning after Christmas I hiked down from a turnout above the upper Waterman Canyon Road intersection with Highway 18 to report on the tragedy being uncovered in and around Saint Sophia Camp. Later, as I talked with a colleague about the scene, the events of the past few months were recalled. He asked, “Is this the end of the world, or what?" Well, we have had a plague of insects—smaller than locusts, but equally destructive. And we have had plenty of fire, and now winds and floods. It’s a fair question, but the question takes me back to the theme of last week’s column—looking on the bright side. I go back there because there is only one alternative to looking on the bright side, and it’s best not to go there. Call me insensitive, but our whole situation reminds me, curiously, of the funniest line in a B comedy movie I watched years ago, so awful that I can’t even recall the title. Bad thing after bad thing kept happening to one of the main characters. When finally he could longer take it, he screamed in a thick Bronx accent, “Hey, who am I–Job!?” As I recall, the Job of old that he was referring to got through a little bad spell in his life by finally coming back around to looking on the bright side. If you were feeling a little down on Christmas, the torrential rain and high winds probably didn’t help, and if you were among the many who lost power for several hours, that probably didn’t help you either. Some of those who didn’t lose power were having other problems. A friend of mine had the pole of a flying patio umbrella break a window in her house. She struggled for a while in the rain to fix the hole with plastic. The guys at Crest Forest Fire can tell you about a lot of worse things that happened to Crestline people on that day. This may be petty compared to what happened to some others, but I have to admit I was a little grumpy when I realized that my turkey had about two hours left to cook, the power wasn’t coming back for a while, and it was raining far too hard to even consider getting my charcoal barbecue going. I have a gas stove in the kitchen, but the thermostat is regulated by electricity, and it turns off when the power goes off. So I had to improvise. To make the turkey fit, I cut off the legs, then arranged the whole thing inside a Dutch oven on a small rack, poured in the liquid, put the lid on it and cooked it the rest of the way on the stove. It was the juiciest turkey I have ever made. From now on, I’m going about two pounds down on the turkey so it will fit nicely in the Dutch oven and I’m cooking it on the stove. I also have found a neat little trick in power outages for relatively safely getting a lot of light into a room. Like most houses here, our top floor has eaves jutting out, and there are beams going out to the edge of the eaves. Just nail two nails close together on a beam near the middle of the window in front of the room you want to illuminate. Then take a Coleman propane lantern, light it and hang it from the nails outside. It gives you great light for a long time, the fire and carbon monoxide stay outside, and the lantern stays out of the rain. Since we couldn’t watch television we had to entertain one another by playing with toys and games. That means we also were unaware of what was happening on the news, which would not have helped our outlook. The amount of rain that fell will certainly make our trees stronger. The days of cold that followed will drive the beetles farther into inactivity and perhaps kill some of them. We were hoping for the eight to 12 inches of snow that had been predicted. Instead, we ended up with a “White Crustmas,” which is something I’ve never heard anyone singing about dreaming about. It was just as well—we were all so sick that we would have made ourselves worse by sledding and carrying on. However, it was so cold that we could just put our food outside in the ice chest and on the table without the need for ice while the power was off. The cold also allowed us to snuggle up by the fire, read and play. So, David Letterman-style, let’s have a recap of the Top 10 Great Things Abut Having Torrential Rains and a Power Outage on Christmas: #10. Learning a neat way to illuminate a room. #9. Saving about three bucks on electricity. #8. Spending a night with the family in which television is not an option. #7. Getting plenty of water to strengthen the trees. #6. Having several cold days to weaken the beetles. #5. Getting a chance to recuperate because of no snow. #4. Saving four bucks on ice. #3. Snuggling up by the fire. #2. Finding the best way, after all of these years, to cook a turkey #1. Exercising my mind, because I’ll tell you this: it isn’t easy trying to think up 10 great things about having torrential rains and a power outage on Christmas |
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