They didn't trust the city so they moved to the county.
Way out there. No cafes, no close friends, no sidewalks.
Bored in the mobile home.
So they decided the world was coming to an end.
They needed the excitement.
First it was the Great Pumpkin.
But it never came over the pumpkin patch.
Then Jesus was coming again.
Comet Hale-Bopp turned out to be a flop.
Okay, it will be Y2K.
They were all prepared.
Hid behind their "home security system."
The auxiliary generator was fueled.
Art Bell was tuned in on the wind up Begin radio.
They looked out over the corn patch.
Nothing else to do.
Waiting for that big power failure.
They cried, "please make my day;"
"memorable at least."
January 2000 came.
The lights stayed on.
Bank machines in the city worked fine.
Nothing to break the boredom, except inside their home.
The home security system failed.
Its embedded chip was not Y2K compliant.
A fire alarm rang.
The garage door stuck open and cold January air invaded the house.
Nothing was wrong with the country's power grid.
They called the security company all mad.
Phones still worked fine.
Person at security company reminded them of instructions.
Y2K updating for the system. They forgot to read.
Security dispatcher said there is a book called
"THE HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD."
What a concept. End of world has a history also.
Just like everything else. Life goes on.
Civilization could be trusted again.
 Be careful stockpiling all that fuel. This may be the biggest Y2K threat. Someone sent me this clipping. I cropped it so the name of the trailer owner wouldn't show. I don't want to embarrass him further. You get the message, stockpiling fuel and the "bunker mentality" will probably be our only Y2K problems.
The biggest power outage I remember from my childhood years was planned. They upgraded the substation for Pullman, WA back then. Outage was supposed to last about 3 hours, but went 30 minutes, or so, over planned time. When power didn't come on, as planned, my brother said he saw huge blue sparks in the direction of the substation. That added to the excitement. Then the lights came on and it was almost disappointing. Just a few minutes delay. Not some exciting crisis where we needed to hunker down with our candles. By Robert Ashworth
|
R
e
m
e
m
b
e
r
i
n
g
T
h
e
L
a
s
t
C
e
n
t
u
r
y