Bill Hastings

The AEP trucks that were all over town have mostly disappeared now, leaving us with as much heat and light as we can afford to pay for inside our house while outside the snow and ice continue to decorate the Christmas tree, still in its stand, that we got as far as our deck. It seems to me that snow has fallen every Monday night since December, but maybe that's just when I notice it because I have symphony rehearsal on Monday nights.

I'm grateful that we have power, especially since the radio just informed me that the wind chill tonight will feel like 15 below. I've been thinking about a passage from the novel Saving CeeCee Honeycutt (which I found otherwise forgettable) in which a character says "There's no doubt in my mind that certain temperaments do better in some climates than others."

But I am grateful, oh yes indeed I am--daily, now--to have power in this climate. My recently renewed feeling of gratitude for electricity--along with the uncharacteristic advice I got last night from my daughter's former gifted teacher about how to get her through college and into a well-paying job as fast as possible--makes me think of this 1990 poem by Todd Jailer entitled "Bill Hastings":

Listen to me, college boy, you can
keep your museums and poetry and string quartets
'cause there's nothing more beautiful than
line work. Clamp your jaws together
and listen:
It's a windy night, you're freezing the teeth out
of your zipper in the ten below, working stiff
jointed and dreaming of Acapulco, the truck cab.
Can't keep your footing for the ice, and
even the geese who died to fill your vest
are sorry you answered the call-out tonight.
You drop a connector and curses
take to the air like sparrows who freeze
and fall back dead at your feet.
Finally you slam the SMD fuse home.
Bang! The whole valley lights up below you
where before was unbreathing darkness.
In one of those houses a little girl
stops shivering. Now that's beautiful,
and it's all because of you.

So thank you, unnamed AEP workers who got our power back on after the icepocalypse last week. We waved to you when you parked in front of our house, but you were busy. I think of you when I feel sullen because the ice still won't go away, and I try to call up the memory of that joy I felt when you first slammed that fuse home or whatever it was you had to do to make our lives liveable again.