I Am So Happy!

It was very difficult to find a house in Asheville. Kathy looked pretty much full-time for about eight months before reaching an agreement with the owner of our house. Finding the right house, even in periods of economic chaos, is possible, but it involves a lot of hard work.

I sold the house in Madison and stashed the money in the bank. When we approached our moving date, I proposed to Kathy that we use a part of the profit from the sale of the Madison house to buy something that each of us wanted. Kathy wanted a hot tub, and I wanted a generator.

I had good reason to want a generator. A few years ago, the remains of a tropical storm passed through Madison, with the result that we lost power for 76 hours. The weather was warm, so we were not in danger of freezing to death, but we dearly missed air conditioning. I ended up disposing of the contents of two refrigerators and one freezer. And, given that the weather was warm, the act of reading by the light of a (heat-producing) Coleman lantern was torture. I was very happy to see the return of electric power.

A few years later, we spent the Christmas break at our cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains. This was the year that I experienced my first white Christmas. The mass of snow eventually killed the power to the cabin. We were able to stay warm by using the fireplace, but there was only one fireplace (in the living room), so the bedrooms were freezing cold. Worst of all, we were running low on food, and the roads were impassable. A couple of days later, the power was restored, and the roads eventually cleared, but not before we had sympathetic thoughts about the Donner party. If we had lived there full-time, we would have had a freezer full of food. And given the loss of power, we probably would have lost a good bit of that food.

So I have been keen on having a generator for a while. One of our new neighbors told me a story that cemented my desire to go into the electric generation business. A few years ago, on Christmas Eve, a tree fell on our next-door neighbor’s house, taking down a power line. The neighborhood was without power for three days. Can you imagine that happening at Christmas?

I ordered a permanent, gas-fired generator capable of powering the entire house in May. It was installed in June. The lady who sold us the generator told us that, upon the loss of power, the generator would wait a few seconds (maybe 10 to 15) before kicking on, but when power was restored, the generator would just quit, and the transition back to the grid would be seamless. We tested it after the installation, and it seemed to work. And every Wednesday at noon, the generator goes through a self-diagnostic to see if it is indeed ready for action. But the only time the generator actually turned on was in late August. The electrician was upgrading our service in anticipation of wiring Kathy’s hot tub, and he killed the power to the house. About 15 seconds later, the generator kicked on. It was a shocking experience for the electrician. (Yes, pun intended.)

And there we have it. I waited all winter in vain for the power to go out. I was going to be a bright island of light, and heat, and television, and internet, is a vast ocean of darkened houses. But it never happened. I was disconsolate. Kathy tried to keep my spirits up, telling me that it was a good idea to spend the price of a small automobile for a piece of equipment that sits silently, waiting. But I was getting discouraged.

Friday evening we were getting ready to go out to dinner to celebrate Kathy’s recent birthday when suddenly the house went dark. About 15 seconds later, the generator kicked on, and power was restored. Oh Happy Day!!

My joy was short-lived. About two minutes after the generator kicked on, the power was restored, and the generator went silent. The transition was, indeed, seamless.

We could, of course, have survived those two minutes without electricity, but for some reason, those two minutes made me the happiest man in Asheville.