Scott Hollifield: A city boy can barely survive

I recall The Great Blizzard of '09 as if it were last week or maybe the week before. There we were, huddled in our home, no electricity, snow falling, wind howling, wolves at the door.

"Oh, what shall we do, father?" cried the little one, her eyes showing great trepidation in the flickering candlelight.

"Might we perish, husband?" whispered the wife, her brow creased with worry beneath her fiery red mane.

"Do not fear, family," I said. "I will move heaven and earth to provide warmth and bring forth some sort of entertainment that will keep us from going mad and killing each other."

That's how I will tell it someday.

The truth is, my failure to prepare for even the shortest of power outages nearly did us in. And it shames me. I was a Boy Scout. In addition to being able to tie knots and wash the Scoutmaster's car, I should always be prepared.

It's the city living that softened me up, dulled my rural reflexes and allowed me to grow fat and lazy. They pick up your beer cans, uh, I mean trash, in the city. No more trips to the Dumpster site, shooing away strays cats and (absolutely true) feral pigs to empty the back of the truck. They effortlessly pump water right into your home. No more swatting black widow spiders in the well house to see if lightning hit the pump. They take away whatever you choose to flush down the commode. No more hiring a backhoe to excavate what you are 100 percent sure is not buried treasure.

Back when we lived in the country, the missus (that's what I called her back then, among other things) and I once went for nearly a week - heck, let's just call it two months to make the story better - with no power, heating the house with a wood stove, reading by oil lamp, listening to the radio, hauling water from the creek and eating homemade caribou jerky.

Even though I made up the part about caribou jerky, the point is, I was prepared. I provided for my family and kept us in relative comfort, unlike the The Great Blizzard of '09.

When the power went out shortly after dark. we scrambled to find a flashlight to illuminate our search for other flashlights.

"Where is the %$#! flashlight I keep in this drawer?" I said, though I did not use those exact symbols.

With the furnace sitting useless in the basement, I attempted to light the propane gas logs in the living room, which, I found, work much better when there is propane in the tank. I uttered several more symbols.

It's a tight house, the temperature at that time wasn't expected to drop to extreme bone-chilling, and I figured city folks get their power back pronto, so I decided we could light a few leftover birthday candles, play some cards and listen to that old-timey radio contraption for entertainment.

The problem was, that old-timey radio contraption - actually a 6-year-old portable CD boombox - would not work, no matter how many different combinations of D batteries I slammed in it.

Four hours later, as we stared at one another, growing increasingly annoyed with each other's breathing, I did about the only thing I'm proud of that night, aside from not killing anyone with a hatchet. I found an already outdated MP3/FM player in a junk drawer, hauled up a 25-year-old stereo speaker from the basement, spliced them together with wires from a pair of headphones and - very weakly - tuned in our public radio station. We had music, music that did come from my guitar followed by the popular request, "Please Stop."

Twelve hours after it left us, power returned. We had miraculously survived, no thanks to me.

Before darkness fell again, I had a full tank of propane, three new flashlights, an AM/FM/weather radio and a renewed determination to be prepared.

All I need now is a cabinet packed with caribou jerky.