"NOT A REAL BEAR"

Everytime I drive into town I pass the life-size statue of a bear standing in front of a seasonal fast-food place, and it reminds me of what one of my friends told me.

She was going through a dark patch in her life and had driven into town, her heart and mind burdened with sadness. Flipping the radio dial she came across the Christian station, Sound of Life, which was proclaiming God's love through its music. Although my friend is a believer, she had been feeling abandoned by God, and so abruptly she said, "God, if you exist and you really love me, I want to see some proof of it. I want to see a rainbow."

Now this was wintertime, and there was no chance at all she was going to get a rainbow. But after she done her shopping when she got back in her car, she spotted a picture of a rainbow. It was, according to her, a fairly sorry example of a rainbow, lacking half its colors and what it did have were upside down in the wrong order, but it was a rainbow. Sort of.

"Not good enough," she told God. And maybe too easy. "Let's try again. This time I want to see a bear, and not just a picture of one either."

And then, of course, she drove past the bear on the corner. Well, it wasn't a picture! But neither was it a real bear. And she said, feeling like a petulant five-year-old, she told God so. "That's not a real bear!"

Pulling up at the traffic light, she saw emblazoned across the back window of the pickup truck in front of her the words, "NOT A REAL BEAR."

THE BLIZZARD OF FEBRUARY 2010

A few of my friends have asked how we made out in the blizzard. Well, we did it with a lot of prayers and God's help! He takes care of widows and the fatherless! He really does.

I really appreciate their concern. Hey, I was happy today that I finally could go out our front gate! Another small victory. Now they are predicting floods from the snowmelt--sorry, one disaster at a time, please.

Our neighbors next door and across the road and for four miles on down that road on both sides had no power from Thursday night at 9 p.m. onward. People complain about no lights or TV, but here the main problems are no water (wells require electric water pumps) and no heat (most furnaces need electric power to run thermostats and blowers, etc. Even a neighbor with a pellet stove was out of luck as were others with wood stoves that have thermostats). We have a wood stove, but I had very little wood split and most of our wood is out in the garage, which by that time I couldn't even get to in the deep snow.

Anyway, our power blinked then, but praise God, it came back on and held. I prayed a lot, believe me. We and the few people between us and the corner were the only little island of electricity, I gathered, as the people I talked to on the other three sides of the intersection went out the same time. Some people had generators, but the filling stations were running out of gasoline, and a lot of people had nothing. Plus, the roads here were not the greatest, and many were simply closed. The counties began declaring states of emergency to get people off the roads unless they really had to be there.

Some bosses feel that all their employees are "essential." I had one who told us when the county sheriff ordered everyone off the roads except "essential personnel" that if you didn't consider your job essential, he didn't need you. Eek! But here many, if not most, businesses closed, as of course did the schools. They were closed, I think, every day that week except Monday--nothing like having two major snowstorms in one week. Reminded me of Oneonta where my first winter we had three blizzards in one week, and even the natives assured me that was unusual!

My major concern was lack of fuel oil. We had been due for a delivery on Wednesday, and they didn't make it. Thursday I called just in time to catch the dispatch gal as she was on her way out the door. They had called all the drivers in because the roads were so terrible. She said to call again Friday morning. When I did, I got the main office up in Syracuse. The man there said to call a little later. But their local office was still closed, and I ended up talking to another man in Syracuse. By that time I was starting to panic. They had nearly let us run out the time before. The gauge said quarter of a tank, but that amounted to 14 gallons and we were close to pulling up sludge into the furnace. Last year when that happened, it cost us $500 in furnace repairs. All of the people I talked to were very nice, but couldn't do much to help us at that point.

So, to keep from running out completely, I turned the furnace down to 60 degrees and put on the electric heater for my mom. She's 97 and freezes at 72 degrees. I'm sure our electric company will love us for all the power we were using. Nearly everyone around us was dark! Well, someone has to keep the power company in business.

Friday night at 5 p.m., the fuel oil people sent us an angel with 10 gallons to tide us overnight, so I put the furnace up to 65 to warm the house a bit. It came on once, but at 5:45, our power also went out.

I called the power company to report the outage and was told it would be March 2 before we'd get power restored. No way could my mom stay in a cold house that long. I was told to leave. And go where? First off, I couldn't have gotten her to the car. Second, I couldn't have gotten the car loose. And third, where would we go? I looked out and saw a couple of neighbors and I asked them if the blinker light at the corner was out or was it just our house. They said the blinker was out, too.

So, I went back and called the power company again and sat through about 30 minutes of "on hold" music and ads. Finally I got to their emergency staff and told the woman about the blinker being off. It's a very dangerous intersection on a nice sunny day in July with a hill that cuts off visibility so you can't see the crossroad until you're right on it, a fence on one side and a store on the other that prevent drivers from seeing who's coming. Add a slippery road that hadn't been plowed yet, and it doesn't take long before someone tries to run into someone else. Within a short time a State Trooper came flying into town with lights flashing. I assume he was checking to see the conditions. By 7:15 we got our power back on. Praise God!

The TV said 27,000 customers from our power company alone were out, and over 1 MILLION people without power in the Northeast. Of course each "customer" is a house or apartment building.

Anyway, once we had power back on, then we just had to worry about running out of oil all night. I kept it really low, and we finally got a real delivery of fuel oil this morning, but the power flickered off and on after that, so I tried to keep all dishes washed up, toilets flushed, temperature up high (so it would take longer for the house to get cold) etc.

Water is always our biggest concern because of the water pump on the well. Then the oil delivery man told me "the road is on fire down a ways." Huh? He said a line was down and the macadam is smoking. Not good for driving a fuel oil truck through! His power at his house has been out for 3 days, and his wife was boiling snow to make coffee. Another neighbor still had no power on Monday and was catching meltwater coming off his roof.

Each day I was able to do more. The first day I couldn't even open the doors. The front porch had a foot of snow on it, blocking the doors. And of course I'd left the snow shovel out there. Not smart. Couldn't get the back door open either. The snow had drifted in all directions. I did manage to fill some of the bird feeders, but walking was almost impossible. It took me an hour to get to three feeders, and I couldn't have done it if I hadn't been able to cross from the last one to the driveway and come in the front--no way would I have been able to go back to the back door the way I came. I kept thinking how easy to walk or even run across the yard normally! By Monday I was able to reach all but one birdfeeder. That was under the cedar tree which lost its top. My mom planted the cedar in 1920 (It was their two-foot tall tabletop Christmas tree). I couldn't get to the garage and forget about the shed--it might as well have been on Mars.

We've got branches and twigs down all over the yard. It'll be a big cleanup this spring. I haven't even tried at this point. A lot of them are still frozen down in the snow, which is quite deep in places out back.

The post office was closed two days and we had no garbage pickup for two weeks. All the things we take for granted in "civilization" were shaken. I was able to email my friends though even when the power was out--my laptop ran on batteries and my DSL modem was fine, as was the telephone. But I helped a neighbor charge up her cell phone when we had power and she had none.

I cleared the driveway twice during the storm, but after the plows came by they left the end of our drive with snow piled shoulder high on me, and I had to have a neighbor help me dig through that!

The radio station said we got 12 to 15 inches in the first storm and 33 inches in the second one. TV said we got 50 inches. National news said Monroe (not far from here in Orange County) got 31 inches, but that Sullivan County got more. I took a yard stick out to measure and lost the stick! I just found it a couple of days ago.

In addition to spring yard cleanup I've GOT to split more wood. We've got the wood stove if the power goes off, but have very little split wood on hand. That's my fault. We used so much in 2008 when our furnace went out and I never replaced it. We could make a day on what I've got, maybe even two, but the split wood is on the porch where it got snowed on and got wet. The rest of the wood is in the garage I couldn't get to and the ax is in the shed. I was NOT PREPARED for a 3-4 day outage! But God takes care of widows and the fatherless!

But it's over now. Snow is melting. Little white snowdrops are blooming here and there, and I picked wild chives for our salad yesterday. I hear robins, and we had a flock of grackles at our feeders this morning.