The Ice Storm of Aught-Nine

Prologue

Over a period of two days, enough freezing rain fell to bring down the power lines and poles over a wide geographic area.  Kennett, Missouri and the surrounding rural areas were among the hardest hit.  Nine thousand utitlity poles had to be replaced.  Virtually no one had power.  The local distribution lines were down, as well as the transmission lines from the power plants sixty miles away.  For want of anything constructive to do, I began keeping this journal.  It is a record only of my own thoughts and experiences during the ordeal, and is far short of a comprehensive documentation.  

I was uncomfortable, but did not suffer as many did.  I lost income and have lots of repair and cleanup expenses, but I'm not broke, as many are.  So, don't waste any sympathy on me.  If you're interested, then read on.  I'll include a few pictures and more are available here.

Day Minus One: Sunday, January 25, 2009

We were at the Missouri Veterinary Medical Association convention at Tan-Tar-A resort on the Lake of the Ozarks. On Sunday morning, my classmate and Docs-A-Cyclin’ buddy Dr. Rick Jefferson expressed concern about "a lot of ice coming in". I replied, "That’s not until Monday, and I’ll be home by then." I was only thinking of the road conditions and travel. It did not occur to me that I would soon be experiencing my first natural disaster.

Day Zero: Monday, January 26, 2009

Monday evening, I worked my shift at the Kiwanis Little League Basketball games. Bart Carter (head of the City, Light,Gas & Water electrical line crews) was refereeing. Fire Chief (and emergency management coordinator) John Mallott shared concessions duty with me. He stepped outside for a minute and noted that freezing rain had begun. Joking with Bart, he said "That rain is starting to freeze a little; you’ll be getting some overtime." Bart laughed and replied, "I hope not!" At 9:30 PM, I headed home. I had to scrape some ice off the windshield, but the roads weren’t bad.

Day One: Tuesday, January 27, 2009

At six-thirty AM, I was awakened by what I first took to be thunder. It was, however, the first salvo of a bombardment that would continue for the next three days. The evergreen foliage of the pines was the first casualty of the storm. Our beautiful big pine trees soon became telephone poles, stripped of their limbs by the ice accumulation. The noise was the boughs rending away from the trunk and crashing to the ground. The rest of our many trees looked okay, and so did the power lines.

The freezing rain had fallen gently all night and continued to fall throughout the day. I went to work as usual on Tuesday morning, and everything was pretty normal in town. Greg, my right-hand man, had fallen on the ice the night before, injuring his wrist. It was swollen and "didn’t look right". He was in considerable pain, despite the Darvocet he had taken. The drugs (plus the pain) were impairing his thought processes, and he was not able to formulate much of an action plan.

I radiographed his arm and found that his radius had a transverse fracture just proximal to his wrist. After applying a SAM splint, I fashioned a sling to elevate the swollen wrist. There was no answer at the orthopedic surgeon’s office, so I called the hospital. Dr. Landry was performing a knee surgery and would be tied up until twelve. We sent Greg home to make a later rendezvous with the doctor.

Sharon had not tried to brave the ice, so it was just Shannon and I to finish out the morning without further incident. Precisely at noon, the electricity went off. We didn’t start our scheduled (elective) surgery on O’Malley the cat, fearing that it might be several hours before the power was restored. Little did we know.

There was only one other patient in the hospital, an English Bulldog who was boarding, so I sent Shannon on home. I wasn’t very cold, but we had no heat source in the hospital, no lights, and no telephone (our phone system is electronic).

I piddled around, doing a little paperwork (eventually burning out one flashlight), and went home around 6:30 PM through dark streets to a dark house. I could see street lights in the distance to the east, so I drove a little farther to see who still had lights. As I passed the well-lit Middle School, its lights blinked out and the whole town looked dark (as indeed it proved to be).

At home, Libby cooked a nice meal on the gas range and had numerous candles lit. It was almost festive, though getting pretty cool. The house was about 50-F. After supper, I was able to have a hot shower, thanks to our gas-fired demand water heaters. Then we put on a few layers of long-johns and sweats and piled under a bunch of covers.

The sound of big branches breaking and falling was continuous now. I began to think that this must be the sound of a night in Baghdad, or London during the Blitz. So far our house had been spared. Though there were a couple of big limbs on top of the carport, it had suffered no structural damage. We slept in spite of the frequent loud reports as more branches and treetops broke.

Day Two: Wednesday, January 28

On Wednesday morning, it was cold, but clear. The sun was shining brightly to reveal a landscape somewhere between that of Narnia under the rule of the White Witch and the Tunguska Meteor Impact.

Our home had been surrounded by venerable shade trees and these were largely devastated. One corner of the carport had been hammered by the successive impact of several large limbs (8-inch diameter). While the trusses appeared intact, there were holes in the decking, and the impact had smashed the side supporting beam down on to its supporting post, cutting the 4x12 in half. The corner sagged unpleasantly and the siding was popped off the gable end and eaves. Fortunately, the two cars beneath were not damaged nor in danger. 

There was no way to get those cars out, however, as the driveway was covered with large tree limbs. An enormous oak limb that traversed the drive had drooped from its usual nine-foot height down to the ground. Incredibly, it wasn’t broken, but it certainly blocked the drive. I had had the foresight to park my truck in the middle of the front yard, so it was okay.

I was quite suprised to find that Tuesday night's paper (the Daily Dunklin Democrat) had been delivered.  "More freezing rain expected".  Well, yeah... However, with the sun shining brightly and no broken poles or power-lines within sight, I was optimistic that we would soon have our electricity back on. I wasn’t looking forward to the clean-up, or to the carport repairs, but felt that we would be back to normal fairly soon.

When I drove to the clinic, I soon found that the situation was considerably worse than I had imagined. My first indication was the sight of a transformer detached from its pole, dangling by a wire. Then I saw numerous broken utility poles. The top crossbars of one pole were swinging like the sword of Damocles above the middle of Washington street on a sagging power-line.

The clinic was undamaged, except for some broken limbs on my two young trees. There was little to do. I opened the ice-sheathed mailbox and removed a surprising amount of mail from Tuesday’s afternoon delivery. It was mostly bills (wouldn’t you know?).

The cat’s owner came to retrieve him and we left his future appointment date to future considerations. After caring for the bulldog, I transferred all the perishable medicines and vaccines to one refrigerator and packed it full with all the frozen cold packs we had. I figured that if they stayed cool for two days in July, they ought to last quite a bit longer as the clinic cooled down. Then I’d just have to worry about the other medicines freezing and bursting (not to mention the water pipes).

I set all the faucets dripping lightly, then made a trip to buy non-toxic antifreeze for the toilets. O’Reilly’s had no power, but was open and selling out of flashlight batteries. They still had plenty of antifreeze. It was good place to hear a little gossip bout exploding power substations and gloomy forecasts about how long it would take to restore power.

O’Reilly’s had sold out generators and a truckload that they should have received had been commandeered by their Poplar Bluff store and sold out from under them. They anticipated the delivery of a truckload of generators the following day and were putting folks on a waiting list.

I elected not to look for one, as I couldn’t see a ready way to plug my furnace into it, and we were able to sleep okay with lots of blankets and bundling up. Both the home and clinic were too sprawling to cover with electric space haters, even if you could buy enough of them. The weather prediction was for moderate temperatures, so the risk of freezing pipes appeared minimal.

Twenty years ago, I had built a heavily insulated room in the basement and put in a wood-stove. In the early years, we had had an occasional fire in it, but the room was so heavily insulated, the stove would get it too hot. Unfortunately, I had not had the chimney swept in years. When I burned a test piece of paper, the flue would NOT draw. Probably full of bird nests. So, my one real emergency preparation had been negated by neglect.

We spent Wednesday afternoon filling water vessels in case the city water supply quit working. We filled the five-gallon can, the five-gallon water coolers, thermos jugs, my Platypus hydration packs, whatever. This last proved unnecessary, as the city kept power to the water treatment plant (which is quite near the power-generating plant). They also kept the sewer system operating by periodically taking generators to the lift stations and pumping them out. I would have hated to be carrying buckets of "night soil" to the frozen compost heap.

Still, we didn’t know when or if we might lose water, and it gave us something to do. With no power, I couldn’t work much, and didn’t feel like playing in the snow. So it was good to be busy.

I spent Wednesday afternoon visiting at my brother Will’s house. When they built it, they wired it so that the whole house could be powered by a generator. They also have a wood-burning fireplace and a lot of firewood. Thus, they had their central heating unit, a blower in the fireplace, refrigerator, freezer, lights and whatever you wanted. The rural water supply had been down for a day, but now they had water pressure as well. Except for the throbbing of the generator, their home life seemed pretty normal.

Wednesday evening, my son Tom arrived about 7:00. He was in college at Murray, Kentucky, and they had sent students home, as they were having the same kind of problems there. President Obama had already declared Kentucky and Arkansas to be federal "disaster areas". Missouri was hit rather hard, and our governor had declared a "disaster", calling out the National Guard (the few who aren’t in Iraq). President Obama left us off his list, though. Perhaps because McCain carried Missouri?

Libby cooked a big stir-fry on the gas range and Tom ate supper with us. He took a look at the situation and declared that he was going to St. Louis. He left right after supper… well almost. He spent a few minutes jumping at the cablevision wire and knocking off icicles. After seeing him finally drive off, we repaired to our hot shower (thank you gas-fired water heater) and cold bed.

We slept warm enough, though nocturnal bathroom trips were reminiscent of a visit to the outdoor privy (sans odor, thankfully).

Day Three: Thursday, January 29, 2009

Thursday morning was grim and gray and a little colder. The house as still 45-F, though, so no damage to the pipes. It did not look like nearly as good a day for melting ice on the lines and trees. The constant crashes of breaking limbs appeared to finally be over. Telephones were still working, thanks to buried cables, but the clinic phones were on an electronic switching system, so still down. I got a call from L.W. (at my home), who was worried that her dog’s sutures might cause a problem if left in for too long. She had had several skin tumors removed the week before. This was hardly life-threatening, but I was going to the office anyway to care for the bulldog. I removed the sutures and sold a bag of dog food that morning. Not exactly a big day.

The Slicer Street Church of Christ had electric power and had become the designated soup kitchen. John Wheeler (son of mayor Roger Wheeler) was coordinating food preparation through a number of churches. He brought several chickens to the Presbyterian church and several of us brought pasta, vegetables, spices, etc. It was a little reminiscent of the "Stone Soup" fable. It was easy to be generous, as you could see how much food would be wasted as freezers thawed out.

It was a jolly and warm time with the ancient gas range in the church’s original basement kitchen (our lovely new Presbyterian Activity Center building is "all electric", naturally). We made twelve gallons of delicious soup. As it happened, Viretta had purchased five, brand-new 5-gallon white plastic buckets with snap-on lids to use as seating in a kid’s choir extravaganza. I washed these (though they looked pristine) and Chuck Earnest and I conveyed four of them filled with soup to the Slicer Street Church of Christ.

We had been warned by John Wheeler not to march in declaring our soup openly. The Red Cross had already turned away food because it was not prepared under their aegis. However, since they weren’t actually supervising the kitchen directly, we were able to sneak our buckets of soup through a side door. Thus the hungry folks were able to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

The Red Cross folks had developed a reputation for being a little snippy and trying either dominate or exclude relief efforts. When a church member referred to the VFW as a "shelter", she was harshly reprimanded with "That’s not a shelter. It’s a warming center." Whatever.

Nursing home residents had previously been moved to the American Legion building. Physicians (at least Dr. Jain) had been working around the clock admitting folks to the hospital because our two dialysis centers were shut down.

I still had made no effort toward cleaning the driveway (much less the yard). There were many large limbs hanging and ready to fall as soon as the ice melted a little. I had no wish to be struck down just so we might be able to get another car out.

Thursday afternoon we gathered the fixings for "Taco Garbage" and headed to Will & Jill’s house. Cousin Dan was staying there. Libby fixed dinner and we stayed late, playing Trivial Pursuit with Joe (and occasionally Will or Jill or Dan).

Later that evening, Matt and Will and I met M.E. at his home. He had secured a load of generators via a friend in Springfield, Missouri. The bank forked over $1,000 for a $500 generator (and glad to get it) and we took it to the Mid-County Branch of SSB. Both Kennett and Senath would open for part of the day on Friday and Saturday under generator power.

Matt & Martha had been staying pretty comfortable. They have a gas heater (the original heat when the house was a two-room cabin) and a generator which they fired up to run the refrigerator and water pump (their water comes from a well).

Aunt Leah had put two kerosene-burning heaters in her house and she kept it pretty warm. At first they were improperly adjusted and filled the house with toxic fumes. This had been rectified (and nobody was hurt), but in the meantime, she discovered that the Dunklin Day Activity Center (her place of work) was on one of the rare power-grid corridors that was active. She and about ten other folks proceeded to move in and be warm.

Gary had moved into Leah’s house and was caring for Toodles the poodle. Leah took Joe the parrot with her to the DDAC. She had kept her in a box under the covers with her the first night. No word on how her chickens are doing outside.

Day Four: Friday, January 30, 2009

On Friday morning the ice had thawed enough to allow the tree branches to spring back up.  The driveway would soon be amenable to clearing.

 I scrounged up some telephone extension cords and took a telephone to the clinic. The open jacks downstairs have been disabled, but I was able to switch some plugs in the attic and get my land-line going. I certainly didn’t have many calls. If you want to know how important your work is, this is a good way to find out. Pet repair is a luxury item. Mostly I sat in the clinic, silent except for the ticking clocks, dripping faucets, and the meter-mist deodorizers dutifully spraying at their appointed intervals.

I took sutures out of another dog and sold another bag of dog food. One lady came in to ask if I could board her dog and cat while she went out of town to get warm. She decided to take them with her.

I went home for lunch (my usual cold sliced turkey and bagel, but I used warm water for my Emergen-C drink). I stopped by the Post Office to get our mail and ran into Ms. Fern Daugherty, my fourth-grade teacher. She was preparing to leave for a warmer situation also. One of her neighbors had been loaning her a propane heater for two hours twice a day, but she was tired of being cold. We had a nice visit. She is my all-time favorite teacher. Not only was she very kind to me, she was the only teacher I ever had whom I feel genuinely liked me. Probably says more about me than my teachers, but there you are.

After lunch, I spoke with Jill. Their horse, Mike, had injured his right hind leg out in the pasture on Sunday while I was still at Tan-Tar-A. On Monday, I had examined it and found it still exquisitely painful, despite frequent medication. The swelling precluded any diagnosis without an X-ray. She had gotten Dr. Outz from Dexter to bring his portable X-ray. He took the film back to Dexter Monday night (driving an hour in the freezing rain to get home.) On Tuesday morning (while we still had power) he called me to deliver the very bad news that the short pastern bone was shattered and totally beyond repair (no matter what your budget would allow).

Due to the weather, etc., Jill was unable to secure a back-hoe to dig a grave for Mike. She didn’t want his remains just lying around with a tarp over them, so she had been wrapping his legs and giving pain medicine. On Friday morning, she had finally gotten the hole dug and the plan was to euthanize him after Will left the bank at 3:00.

In the meantime, Will’s cow had escaped and the family had been unable to herd her back into the fence. She had taken off cross-country. The land is virtually all in row-crop cultivation, so cows are few and far between. However, just a couple of miles away, Jimmy Blankenship keeps several cattle as a hobby, and little Bossy had gravitated there.

Before I could help with the cow, I had a call at home from D.B. in Wardell. His dog, Tinker, has a perineal hernia, resulting in periodic bowel impactions. He was crying and straining and passing a little blood. I told Dave to meet me, and an hour later, I as giving Tinker a big enema. I used warm water I had brought from home in my trusty Thermos bottle. Then, on to the cow.

After many false starts and considerable slogging through the muddy field, we managed to lure her close to the gate with a bucket of feed. Jimmy’s Chihuahua kept running her off, defending her home, which was not helpful. After about three hours we were able to drive her into the corral with the other stock. By then, we were out of daylight, and Mike’s euthanasia was postponed for the morrow.

Friday evening, the family gathered again at Will & Jill’s to celebrate our niece Meg’s sixth birthday. We had a feast, complete with a professionally decorated cake procured earlier in the day in Dyersburg when someone made a supply run. It was a fun evening until we finally had to return home to our 40-F house.

Will & Jill offered to let us camp with them, as our Cousin Dan is doing. At home, we could take a hot shower, pile under the covers and sleep okay, though. Plus, we could take care of our own breakfast and lunch, and not have to impose. We weren't exactly comfortable, but we not suffering, either.

Day 5: Saturday, January 31, 2009

Saturday morning was bright and clear and warmer. The temperature eventually reached the mid-forties, so it was warmer outside than in the house. At one point, I thought I would ride my motorcycle on a day like if things weren’t in such a hooraw. I went to the office and cared for the Bulldog. The land-line telephone that I was so proud of did not ring once, but I had a few cell-phone calls.

Dr. Karen Fieser (my former associate) called from Jackson, Missouri to see if she could bring me anything. She was on her way down to see her folks who were toughing it out in the farm-house at Wilhelmina.

Freddy Gentry called, saying he was just calling and checking on a few people. Freddy is our Scoutmaster and he had found the trees around our Scout Hut in terrible shape, just as everywhere else. Miraculously, despite all the falling limbs, our troop trailer was unscathed. I shared with him the inspiration that had struck me when I awoke that morning. "We need a patch for this!" Virtually any organized Scouting event is commemorated with some kind of a patch. The ice storm of "aught-nine" certainly deserves a patch.

Ironically, the Klondike Derby winter camporee scheduled for Saturday had been cancelled due to the ice storm’s destruction. To paraphrase Mother Teresa, "You do not have to go to the Klondike. The Klondike is all around you. Find your own Klondike."

I called Tony Smee to share this brainstorm. He is a great graphic designer and a big Scouter. He was getting his family ready to go to his daughter’s little league basketball game. In Cape Girardeau, civilization continues without a blip. We discussed a patch design with a broken utility pole, icicles, and a helpless man shrugging his shoulders, palms outstretched in supplication.

On Saturday morning, I finally began writing this journal, and stayed at the clinic until around one PM doing so. Then I went home for lunch and decided that it would finally be safe to clear the driveway. As luck would have it, the phone rang after lunch – a lady in distress.

W.M. was going next door to her daughter’s house to feed and water her dog. They  were out of town and left th garage door open for the dog to use as shelter. The dog was free to roam, but "never goes to the street". W. had found the dog prostrate "with its tongue hanging out". It was still breathing and she thought I might have found a down power line and been electrocuted when the neighborhood electricity had come back on (same grid as the hospital, which had come back on in three days).

I drove to the clinic and packed up some emergency supplies – stretcher, muzzle, pain meds, etc. When I arrived, I found W.in the driveway wearing a full-length mink coat. Personally, I had been living in the same pare of long-johns, flannel-lined khakis, and a snowmobile suit since Wednesday morning.

She took me to the dog, who was as stiff as a board. He must have been dead for many hours. The wind ruffling his fur, plus some wishful thinking, had made Wanda imagine that he was still breathing. I bagged him and stowed him in the garage.

She told me that she had been working at the store and that it was cold and dark. Their store on the square is built like a tunnel, windows only in the front (like my clinic), so it’s darker and colder as you go back (like my clinic). She had been wearing the mink coat the whole time (I hear they are quite warm, but have no personal experience). They had sold all the chainsaws they could find.

I headed home to clear the driveway and stopped by the SSB Mid-County Branch. Matt and Will were just closing up shop at 2:00 PM. We changed the oil in the new generator and put it inside the building. Will had to go to Senath to the main bank and I went home to clear the driveway.

Using my truck, a towing strap, and the BSA-approved timber hitch knot, I got the driveway cleared in jig time. Then I headed out to Will’s to euthanize the injured horse. When I arrived, Jill left to go help Dr. Jain get his office going to see patients there instead of at the ER. He had just gotten a FEMA generator hooked up. Also, she didn’t want to be present for the euthanasia.

Mike went easy, but it was nearly three hours later by the time we finished burying him. It was getting cold. I passed a little time by coiling up the downed power lines in the pasture and getting them out of the fence. It’s surprising how small the wires are – they look like you couldn’t hang clothes on them, much less transmit big juice.

Then I headed back to the clinic to care for the Bulldog. I passed a crew starting to set poles between KBOA and my office. Alas, my power comes from the alley behind Westgate, so this didn’t give me any hope of power in the near future.

We went back out to Will & Jill’s again for the family gathering at the evening meal. We ate and visited until ten PM. On the way home, I wondered if we might be stopped for curfew violation, as some had been. We didn’t meet any of the Natural Guard Humvees, but a local police car spot-lighted us. I think he recognized my old truck (one benefit of driving the same vehicle since 1995).

The house was still 40-F, and a hot shower didn’t keep me warm nearly long enough. I was okay once I got bedded down, though. The temperature warmed a little during the night. At least, my face did not seem nearly so cold when I peeped out of the blankets. I slept with underclothes, long-johns, sweats, and do-rag all tucked into a velour sleeping-bag liner, then a sheet, two wool blankets, and my sleeping bag over the top like a comforter.

Day 6: Sunday, February 1, 2009

Sunday morning was again clear and bright, and the temperature was indeed rising. After my cold breakfast and a trip to the Bulldog, I returned to get ready for church. The downstairs water heater had gone out, and I was unable to re-light the pilot, so I turned off its gas valve.

I wore clean pants and sweatshirt to church, as I no longer needed my snowmobile suit. Even though things had warmed up, I still kept my coat and mittens on for the service. Since the organ and keyboard were dead, we wheeled a piano into the sanctuary.

The service was very informal, with hymn suggestions called out from the congregation. We also shared a lot of announcements. It seemed to me that we had a larger congregation than on "normal Sundays". This may have been because everyone sat in the middle section of pews, close to the front, and close together (huddled for warmth). We had a few visitors, too. Of course, the cablevision was down, so maybe people were just starved for entertainment.

Patrick M. called his mother, Ada, who was staying in Little Rock. The whole congregation shouted "Hello!" to her.

The electrical supply lines to the church were crashed down, pulling the weather-head and a section of brick-work off the church.

Lots of visiting after church, and we spent some time turning off all the breakers. Despite the fact that we can’t see the return of power any time in the near future, everyone is worried about the damage that will occur when the electricity does surge back on. So we made a great opt of unplugging things and flipping of the breakers. We’ll probably sit in the dark for two days after the power comes back on.

As I walked into the house, the phone was ringing. Some folks had a suffering ferret which required emergency euthanasia. After that errand of mercy, I returned home and began clearing debris from around the house. After clearing a path to all doors, I found a small amount of additional damage. One of our solar deck lamps had been smashed. There was so much debris that it was obvious a crew of men with chainsaws and bucket trucks would be needed and I didn’t have them.

As I was working, I shed my coat and found myself in shirt-sleeves. The temperature was in at least the fifties, so I opened the windows again to let in some warmer air. I looked around and I thought and I decided to go ride my motorcycle. The bike hadn’t been started for four weeks, and why not?

I couldn’t find any premium gas without ethanol in town, so I just made a short ride to blow the cobwebs out of the bike, and out of my spirit, as well.

On the way home, I stopped to visit my riding buddy, Keith K. He had tried to heat his home with the gas range and suffered a mild case of carbon monoxide toxicity. Just a headache, but scary none the less. He had substituted a new kerosene-burning heater, which appeared to function more safely.

On returning, I passed Keith and Lisa P., our neighbors, who had been working hard all day like a couple of ants. They are obsessive about yard-work all summer and had spent all day Sunday piling up their sticks into more orderly piles. I greeted them and Keith remarked that I was "just out enjoying the day". I agreed, and replied, "As much as you-all enjoy yard-work, this has really been a God-send for you, hasn’t it?" If Lisa hadn’t been there, I believe he would have cussed me a little. He sure gave me a dirty look.

When I got home, I found the house temp up from forty to fifty, but it was getting dark, so I closed up all the windows.

Libby had gone to Jonesboro with Viretta, Mary Jo, and Jane  for laundry and a movie ("Last Chance Harvey") and then dinner at O’Charley’s. I repaired to Will & Jill’s for another family feast, and Libby et al found me there in time to go home. Thanks to the open windows earlier in the day, the house was a balmy 50-F. Still pretty darn cold when I got out of the shower, though.

Day 7: Monday, February 2, 2009

Monday we rose to another sunny day, though it was definitely colder. As I was eating breakfast, the telephone rang. It was the police station, trying to find a veterinarian for a gentlemen whose dog had been attacked. When I got to the clinic, I found a little Maltese dog that had been grabbed across the lower back by a German Shepherd. The owner was in his own yard with the dog on a leash when it happened.

The little dog was very painful, but I believe that with pain meds, antibiotics, and good nursing care, it will recover.

Then things began to happen fairly fast and I wished I hadn’t hooked up the phone, as it just kept ringing. Patsy F. needed to bring a colicky horse, Jerry W. was right on time for his ear infection recheck, and Dawn J. brought in two 100-pound dogs and turned them loose. One was to be euthanized, and the other had just come along for moral support. With the phone still ringing, I gave up and called Shannon in to work.

At the height of the confusion, before Shannon arrived, I received a phone call from a representative of "Newt Gingrich’s something or other of America". I said, "I am working by flashlight in an ice-cold office, in a town that has been without electricity for seven days. If Newt Gingrich and the Republicans had kept faith with their Contract with America, instead of spending like drunken sailors, he’d still be in office!"

With Shannon on the phone, I was able to work through the cases and we finally euthanized Jake. Then things calmed down and we saw a couple of sick dogs and went to lunch.

Before returning to work, I went to the church to photograph the damage where the electric service had been ripped off. You could see daylight around the window-frame in Viretta’s office.

After lunch, I only saw one patient, but fielded a few phone calls. At 4:00, a lady called with a Chihuahua which had just started labor with a "water bag" showing. We discussed how to monitor the labor and I gave her my home number. I also told her I’d be going to my brother’s home for supper.

Instead, I found that the moveable feast had moved to the church basement. Viretta had cleaned out her freezer and spent the afternoon preparing lasagna, French bread, salad and asparagus. There were also a variety of desserts. The old fellowship hall downstairs was decorated with an array of candles. The Byrds were there, and Viretta, Jane Oakley, all the McHaneys (who had returned from Little Rock), Shannon, Dan, and all the Mobleys but Will, plus "Tommy who works for Ervin" and Limmie Pulliam. Will was still trying to work out the bank’s generator problems in Senath.

Limmie Pulliam had written and recorded a gospel song and Viretta played the recording in lieu of "grace" before dinner.

As usual, I ate twice what I should have. Part of this is the abundance of good food, and part of it is being cold. I do the same thing on winter campouts.

As the party was winding down, Will called my cell-phone. He had gone home to rest and warmed up a while, and the Chihuahua lady had called there looking for me. Four hours and the water had not broken. Not good.

Lib and I went to Wal-Mart to see if they accidentally had some small propane bottles so that I could heat the surgery room. They didn’t. When I returned home I called the lady. She was excited because "the water broke". No sign of puppies or labor, though. I hated to burst her bubble of enthusiasm over the bursting of the bubble of amniotic fluid. We discussed the situation and she decided to wait, though a C-section was probably needed. Thus, instead of going back to work, I went back to catching up my journal.

I finally faced up to the fact that restoration of power on our end of town might be a week or more away. I left a message with the electrician about putting a tap on our electric service so that a generator could be used. Just running a couple of extension cords really would not help us, either at work or at home. The electrician had been working at SSB all day, but they had returned my call while I was at Wal-Mart. I let him know that I didn’t expect to be first, but that I’d like to get on the list.