Rant #2,908: Dim All the Lights

Yesterday, the month of May ended with a bang—at least in my neck of the woods—as in late afternoon, we had a power failure.
 
It was about 4:15 p.m. or so, give or take a few minutes, and my day was pretty much over.
 
I had finished my work for the day, took my son to his place of work and picked him up, did whatever other chores I had to do, and I was watching the local news on Channel 4 in my bedroom—
 
When zap!—the power went out.
 
The first thing I did was check the entire house to see if we were all out—the top and my mother’s bottom part of the house—and alas, we were all out.
 
I looked out the window, and saw that during things like this, the actions of people have not changed for as long as I can remember.
 
Everyone came out of their houses to make sure that it wasn’t just their house, but everyone in the area had suffered the same situation on this very hot day.

(Don't believe what you read--at about 2:10 p.m., as I was driving my son home from work, the car's thermometer read 100 degrees as I drove through Amityville here on Long Island. The official high temperature for the area was about 85 or so, but it DID hit 100 degrees, just so you know.)
 
I then called PSEG, our electricity provider, to report the outage, and was told that slightly less than 700 people were impacted, and that the projected time for a resumption of power was about two hours from the time I called, or about 6:30 p.m.
 
Woe was us!
 
I even had a chance to post on Facebook using my phone that we had suffered a power failure, and I received a few responses.
 
You just don’t know how much you rely on electricity until you lose it, and we lost it yesterday—
 
But happily, the estimate was wrong, and we had out power back at about 4:50 p.m., so the outage lasted all of a half hour or so.
 
That was bad enough, but I guess it could have been worse—
 
Like what happened in 1965.
 
Here is what I wrote in Rant #371, way back on November 9, 2010, about the blackout in 1965 that involved pretty much the entire east coast of the United States … now, that was a REAL blackout!
 
“Do you remember the Northeast Blackout of 1965?
 
A series of power failures left 30 million people in seven states, including New York and stretching into Canada, in the dark for as many as 13 1/2 hours before full power was restored.
 
For those who experienced it, it was something that they would never forget--even though they were in pitch black at the time.
 
The event became so famous it was made into a movie. And yes, birth rates went up in cities that were effected by the power outage. Thus, lots of babies were born in August 1966 because, well, in the dark, what else are two people gonna do?
 
Anyway, here is my experience, as I remember it, during this blackout.
 
It was not typical of people living in New York City at the time.
 
I don't remember what we were watching, but the whole family was watching the TV in our living room, an old black and white Dumont.
 
Suddenly, the lights flickered, but did not go off entirely. It was sort of a brownout more than a blackout.
 
We had some power because our community, Rochdale Village, had the foresight to have its own power plant, which did not rely on Con Edison for power.
 
It effected us, but not to the extent of other communities.
 
Anyway, I just remember that everyone on our floor--there were seven apartments on the floor--opened up their doors at about the same time. We could barely see, since we had a brownout, but we all expressed surprise at what was going on.
 
As it stands, Rochdale Village was one of the few places on the East Coast that had power. As the story goes, pilots used Rockdale’s glaring lights as a beacon as they approached nearby Kennedy Airport. Without our lights, the pilots would have had a much tougher time landing their planes.
 
I know that this was something the community was so proud of in its early years. The founding fathers of the development, not wanting to rely on Con Edison, built the power plant so that we would generate our own power. Little did anyone know how valuable that idea would turn out to be.
 
We've had major power failures since then, but there was nothing like this first big one. Everyone who experienced it remembered it. People were trapped in elevators, cities were thrown into chaos--nobody had ever witnessed such an event, so few knew what to do.
 
But I lived in a place that, perhaps unwittingly, did the right thing.
 
P.S.: Just as a side note, during the week of Nov. 9-15, 1979, or 14 years after the blackout, the number one single in the country was ...
 
"Dim All the Lights" by Donna Summer!”
 
Yup, strange but true.

I remember that several years later, when we moved to Long Island and I went to high school here, the subject of the blackout would come up, and I told my story, and even the teachers did not believe me, as the news coverage of the event never included this little side note about Rochdale Village ... but in later years, the story has somewhat come out, and yes, our community's minimal electrical power did help guide pilots into Kennedy Airport ... but I remember the arguments I received about all of this.
 
But yesterday’s power outage was a mere “bag of shells” once you have experienced what we went through in November 1965.
 
This latest one will fade into memory, but that big one … I will never forget it.