The Night The Lights Went Out In (A Tiny Part Of) Levittown

So, where were YOU during the Levittown blackout Of 2011?

Most likely you were sitting in your air-conditioned house, watching TV, texting a friend or surfing the web.

Meanwhile for nearly 12 hours yesterday, a dozen or so houses on our block and an adjoining one were in the dark.

As I understand it, sometime around 2pm an oversized cement truck doing work on the other street caught some low-hanging wires as it pulled away.  A pole was pulled down, wires snapped, and neighbors scrambled out of their homes to see what the heck happened.

We were fortunate: the wires to our home were still attached.  But some of my neighbors weren't so lucky: their electrical cords were literally ripped from the sides of their houses, causing some minor damage.

Overall it could have been much worse.  The downed wires didn't spark, nor did they land in a pool (yesterday afternoon was good swimming weather after all).

Getting the power back up -- well, thanks to the way bureaucracy works in the world, that took a little bit of time.

LIPA was thankfully quick on the scene and ensured that there was no immediate danger to anyone.  However it turned out the trashed utility pole belonged to Verizon, so they had to be called to bring a replacement.  As afternoon gave way to early evening, the Verizon trucks came with the new pole.  Several hours later, the pole was up.  Of course, now we all had to wait for the return of LIPA to get the electricity back on.

Around 9:30pm, a lone LIPA vehicle came into sight.  At this point, most the us on the block were resolved to a long, hot and sleep challenged night.  But within the hour, there were half a dozen more trucks and the LIPA team was hard at work (I would imagine the extra pay didn't suck -- good for them!).

Finally around 2:30 this morning I was awoken to a blast of light in my bedroom as the power came on (I'd forgotten to flip the switches off).  I quickly turned them off, got the A/C on and tried to get a few more hours of blissfully chilly sleep.

Personally, I didn't mind the blackout. Granted, I was working from home and lost several hours (which I'll definitely have to catch up with later this weekend), but getting away from all the pings, beeps and chirps of all the gadgets in our home for a while was quite pleasant.

But tell that to the rest of my family.

My wife is off on a business trip, so lucky for her she escaped all this.  However, our seven-year old twins were having a rough go of it without TV, video games, Internet or DVDs.

But a funny thing happened; while I hate to be cliché and cute, having the power out was a blessing in disguise.

After a dutiful (but clearly useless) attempt to remind the boys I didn't have even half of these electronic devices when I was there age ("We know, Dad...we know."), I brought the boys out to the backyard.  There we engaged in an hour-long game of 'Monkey in the Middle' (three guesses on who the monkey was for most of the time).  We then pulled out a box of LEGOs and went to work building boats that could fly, robots and secret bases.

As the daylight gave way, I ran to McDonald's to treat the boys to Happy Meals.  We retreated back inside where I turned on a couple of camping lanterns.  There, our visiting niece joined us on the couch for several rounds of guessing games and other brain ticklers. The boys then challenged me to tell a story with specific animals and places they tossed out at random (I came up with the adventures of "Cuddles The Dog: Zookeeper")

It was awesome: there were no wires to untangle.  No buttons to push.  No channels to surf.  Just us with snacks, the lanterns, the games and our imagination.

"Is this what people did before TV and stuff?" my one son asked as I got them ready for bed.
"Pretty much." I replied.
"Cool," he said after a moment's thought.

This morning as I stumbled out of bed to make breakfast, I was pleasantly surprised when my other son asked "Dad, can we play those games again maybe tonight?  Mommy will be home and she'll love it!"  Of course, I said.  He smiled a big smile...and promptly went over to turn on the Wii and kick some butt on Super Mario Galaxy.

I guess it's all about the little victories.