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| a new presence on Gibson Road |
Contractor Matti Kopamees described the long-awaited event. The hydro folk arrive with military strength, tie up the road to all traffic, forge deep trenches(or as deep as unyielding limestone would allow) in a straight line from pole to house (as straight as a route can be through sumacs, beside the garage, around cedars, down the slope to the A-frame), conduit laid in the trench, heavy cables forced through it.
A visit to the A-frame yesterday confirmed that Ontario Hydro had indeed, been there. Quite a lot of digging. Quite a tall pole. Looks like quite a battle has taken place here. I wonder how long it will be before the battrachian chorus comes out of hiding, and resumes the serenade.
Al would doubtless have commented.
He might even recall a day when there wasn't hydro at the A-frame, even the slightly homemade and likely potentially hazardous wiring job that sustained the A-frame while it housed Al and Eurithe and Canadian poetry.
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| make way |
Al might have said something like this:
"The house was still a skeleton without flesh in the autumn of 1957: flesh being insulation, siding, paint and other amenities. An old cook-stove in the A-frame living room supplied heat. We had scrounged coal oil lamps for light (there was no electricity.) Three of those lamps, clustered together, if you read a book, meant your eyes wouldn't fall out of your head. But they were a smoky dangerous fire hazard right out of the nineteenth century."
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| okay, we'll decorate around it |
Al did, as a matter of fact. In "Reaching for the Beaufort Sea", page 167.
Wonder if there was a poem about electricity, and its benefits? Anyway, the issue is academic at this point. We've got power.
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