Before I get to the meat of the story I need to take a moment to set the scene and define at least one or two terms. For those not from where I’m from, some of the story I am about to tell might be difficult to understand otherwise.
If you live in, or come from, a place were neighborhoods are defined by blocks, where buses and taxi cabs are everywhere to be seen, or where you can talk to the next door neighbor by shouting through the common wall you share…my home may be utterly unfamiliar to you. So let me first briefly describe the setting.
If you imagine a capital “T” laid out on a map, the horizontal bar on top would be route 3. This is a two lane each way highway that runs for many miles through the middle of the area I live in. It connects the towns of Fredericksbug and Culpepper, and is the main way to get from my home to the interstate.
The vertical bar would be Ely’s Ford Road. It runs about 6 miles from Route 3 to the road I live on, and keeps on going for many miles beyond that. It’s one lane each way, and it winds and twists it’s way back through the woods to many side streets and neighborhoods. Hundreds and hundreds of people live along this road and in the many small communities on side roads that connect to it. There are multi-million dollar mansions on 40 acre plots, and single-wide trailers on quarter acre lots, and everything in between.
Hence forth when I use the phrase “my community” I am talking about everyone who lives between my house and route 3 along Ely’s Ford Road or in the neighborhoods along it.
The term “redneck” may have a negative connotation for those who are unfamiliar, or those who have been propagandized by our media and/or education system. Being a redneck has nothing to do with being racist or backwards. If you want to get a real feel for what it means I suggest watching this video.
Rednecks can build you a car out of empty soda cans and duct tape. Rednecks looked out the window as Noah’s flood was starting and hollered, “Hon, grab me my boots!” Rednecks will pull you out of a burning car, and after making sure you’re not hurt they’ll ask if you have any marshmallows.
Rednecks will come blowing down your road on a 4 wheeler, in a foot of snow, with a flashlight in one hand and a beer in the other, at 3 o’clock in the morning, and when they see you outside putting gas in the generator pull into your driveway and say, “Hey man! What you up to?”
Anyway, on to the story…
Last Monday morning around 9:30 or so the power flickered 4 or 5 times and then the house went dead. We live back in the woods and it was snowing pretty hard, so it was not unexpected. Though when the power company came through and buried the lines last year we thought, mistakenly, that our issues would be over. We were obviously wrong.
Nevertheless, we did what you do. We sat here for a few hours and waited for the power to come back. I had my cell phone and some books downloaded on Audible, so I settled in to wait a few hours. The hours came and went, the snow kept falling, and the power remained off. So as it got near 4 pm I called up to the country store, “Jimmy’s Stop and Shop”, on Ely’s Ford Road. About a mile or so from my house.
I’m not in the physical condition I once was, and struggling to start the generator out in my yard in a snow storm was a bit more than I thought I was up for. So I asked Jimmy if any of the usual suspects were hanging around at the store and wouldn’t mind running up the road to lend me a hand. That’s when I found out how bad it really was.
Jimmy’s started out as just a place to go when you ran short on milk, or sugar, or needed a 12 pack and some smokes. But Jimmy did something that previous owners had never done, he and his family engaged the community. I was one of the first people to stop in just to catch up and hang out for a bit. Over the course of the last 3 years the store has evolved into more of a community center, and it is not uncommon for anywhere from 2 or 3 people on up to 20 or 30 of us to be hanging out at the store.
In any event…if you want to know what the weather is, was, or is going to be…call Jimmy. Want to know what roads are open and what roads are closed…call Jimmy. Want to know who got drunk last night and crashed through a neighbor’s fence, or who got caught sneaking out of someone’s bedroom, or where to find a left handed banjo tuned to Drop D…call Jimmy.
So Jimmy broke it down for me. John was stuck at the farm. Brian had a tree on his car. 20+ power poles were down just on our road. Transformers and lines were all over the street. People needed chainsaws just to get out of their driveways…and it was still coming down. No one was at the store. People were just trying to survive, and make it home from wherever they had been when it started. But, he said, “I’ll see what I can do”.
I told my wife, “No one’s coming. It’s too bad out here. Let me go see if I can get this thing running”. Meanwhile my wife was loading up the wood burning stove cuz it was getting cold, and about to get dark…and colder.
I wasn’t looking forward to messing with this generator. I was sick. I mean running a fever, chest congestion, hacking up a lung style sick. I had just passed out in the shower the night before and had considered going to the hospital. But I have salt water fish tanks, and my first concern was keeping the animals in my care alive. So I put on some jackets and gloves and trudged out into the snow.
About the time I figured out that the generator had been sitting idle too long and it wasn’t gonna start, the headlights started rolling up at the end of the drive. There was Jimmy, and Maxine, and Teddy, And Casey, and a few other people. They messed with the generator for a bit but it wouldn’t run. So I said to Jimmy basically, “It is what it is. Main thing right now is I have no firewood at all and I can’t keep this stove running”. Inside of 10 minutes there was a pickup truck full of firewood being unloaded on my porch…
Bev and I settled in for a long, cold night. We moved a mattress into the living room floor so I could lay next to the fire. And we sat in the cold, dark, absolute silence, and waited for whatever the morning would bring. My dog seemed to find the stove fascinating and I got this pic of her watching it burn.
When the morning came we bundled up and headed up to Jimmy’s to see what was happening. It was, to put it plainly, a goddam disaster. There were trees down everywhere. People were wrecked in ditches. Moron city folk who thought it would be cheaper, or quieter, or something, to live out in the woods were wrecking their Honda Civics and Toyota Camry’s into the back of snowplows and shit, cuz they have no idea how to drive in the snow, or in the country, or apparently even how to slow down.
As is often the case in stressful circumstances, the minutes, and then hours, and then days became something of a blur. I cannot recall every person I saw or every conversation I had. I don’t know for sure who went where or what they did in specific and chronological detail. But here is what I know, and here is what you need to know.
Jimmy, Sarah and their daughter slept in that store, with no heat and no lights, for a week. They turned the store into a command center. It was the place to go to get just enough of this or that to keep yourself alive for another 12 hours. They ran tabs for the whole community. They functioned as a switchboard putting people with needs in touch with people who could help. And they kept the only place most of us could get to open, so that we could sit with each other, huddled around a hobo campfire in a 55 gallon drum, and keep from going stir crazy.
I went up there on Tuesday morning and I sat there all day long. We were completely cut off from the outside world. No one could get to route 3. Hell, we couldn’t even get most of the way up Ely’s Ford. No one was coming. Plows couldn’t get through. Fire and EMS couldn’t get through. We were alone.
But it wasn’t long before the unmistakable sound of rednecks on the move could be heard from every direction. And then, like some kind of glorious freakin parade of God Bless America, they started rolling in. 4 wheel drive trucks, side by sides, ATVs, you name it. If it had knobby tires or a jacked up suspension it started showing up in that parking lot. And then began the best thing I have ever seen in my life.
Some went out alone, some in pairs. Door to door, street by street, checking on friends and neighbors. The old men with money and equipment and local businesses donated machines, and fuel. The saw mill delivered firewood. The farmers either brought or loaned their tractors. The young men with nothing in their pockets, but strong backs and willing hearts, chopped down trees and pulled them out of the road. They delivered water and firewood. They cleared roads and driveways of snow and debris.
As people’s circumstances changed they rolled their blessings down hill. Over the course of the week people who had their power restored brought their generators to Jimmy’s to be delivered to people who were still in the dark. A couple of guys set up a generator repair shop right there in the parking lot and sat outside, in the bitter cold, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and cleaning carburetors.
And we talked…and laughed. We hugged each other and we shivered in the cold. And then someone brought a grill…and we cooked cheeseburgers. And minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, we got by.
Tempers flared a time or two. The refining fire of adversity gave us all a good, clear look at the character of the people around us. To no one’s surprise we found a turd or two.
But let me get back to the point…
I won’t get into naming names here. I would absolutely forget to mention someone, and thereby leave them feeling disrespected or unappreciated. Like I said earlier, I don’t know every detail of every action by every person anyway. But what I know is, a whole lot of people said, “let me know if there’s anything I can do”. And unlike the people in your life who just say shit like that but don’t actually mean it…these folks came through.
Lists were made…of people I didn’t have much respect for before this began, and now I do. Of people I was pretty sure I didn’t like before, and now I know it for a fact.
But the main thing that happened is that some of my faith in humanity was restored. Not the government, or the church, or the police. Not the democrats or the republicans. Not the county council or the Department of Transportation. The people. And not just “the people”, “my people”. These people. This small group that held each other up in ways small and large, taking what they needed and giving what they could.
I told my wife, I’m getting too old and too frail to do much heavy lifting these days. But when I replace my current vehicle I’m gonna buy me a big ol’ jacked up 4×4. Next time there’s an emergency I’m gonna be a bigger part of the solution. This time around I was one of the people who needed help. I’m going to work to make sure that never happens again. There will be firewood stacked 16 feet deep in my shed, and a well maintained functioning generator, and a vehicle that can make it through whatever life throws at us. And I’m gonna be out here with these glorious rednecks, tearing shit up and knocking shit down, and helping them help our community.
But before all that…I gotta try this mattress surfing! 🙂
Lastly, if you’re thinking to yourself that I may have posted to the internet enough information for someone to find my house… you may be right. But I wouldn’t recommend it. I may not yet be as redneck as some of my friends…but I’m rednecker than you. 😉
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