We were all in a state of shock and disbelief 17 years ago, especially when it became clear that the first plane hitting the World Trade Center wasn’t an accident. But even then, as the rubble still smoldered in NYC and DC (and PA), I knew that one day America would rise from the ashes and elect (so to speak) a president that would make George W. Bush look like a stable genius and elder statesman. It took us a while, but in less than 20 years, we’ve gone from a nation that the entire world stood with to the biggest fucking joke in the history of the planet (bit of a sick joke, to be sure, but an impressive one nonetheless). So congratulations to us, and don’t forget to run out and do some shopping. You know, for old times’ sake.

Things are fairly quiet this morning, but not nearly as quiet as they were on Labor Day 20 years ago (although it’s just as hot and humid). That’s because, in the wee hours of Labor Day morning 1998, something called a derecho came through this area. I’d never heard of it before, but a derecho is basically a wall of wind (and thunderstorms) and this one blew through at 115 mph at around 1:15 AM. We woke up because it was suddenly very warm in the house, thanks to the power (and a/c) being off. We stepped out onto the porch to see the tree in the front yard bent more or less in half, and the sky was a very strange color (which was odd, since it was the middle of the night and there wasn’t any power anywhere, though we didn’t know that at the time).

The final day of the NYS Fair was canceled (and only 16,000 or so away from an all-time attendance record), and we began what would be two weeks of cooking on a camp stove and listening to a battery-powered by the glow of Coleman lanterns (good thing I had a lot of camping shit back then). Using a mortar and pestle to grind coffee gets to be a real drag after a few days, let me tell ya. Also, did I mention it was hot? ‘Cuz it was fucking hot.

We’d only gone from dial-up Internet to cable a couple weeks before (pretty sure we were the first kids on the block to get it), and now we were shit outta luck. Actually, the Internet was still working, I think – just wasn’t much good w/o electricity. And it’s not like everybody had a laptop or a tablet or a phone back then. I mean, yeah, I guess there were cell phones – I might have had my good old StarTac back then; I’m not sure – but not phones in the sense that there are phones today.

Our landline was still working, though, so that was a good thing. I guess. The line was pulled off the house and hanging low across the street, but it continued to work for the next two weeks until the power finally came back on, at which point a repair truck went down the street and snagged it, ripping it all the way down.

But, hey, who needs a phone when you’ve got electricity?

It was at this point that my stepdaughter and I began the rather disgusting process of opening and emptying the refrigerator – which was pretty bad. Never could get the stink out of it – not enough baking soda in the world for that – and I wound up buying a new one. It was pretty old anyway.

Syracuse looked like a war zone for quite a while that fall, and the area lost a lot of really great trees. Very sad, and two weeks without power sucked (good think it wasn’t winter) but since there was actual President back then (no matter what you thought of his politics, or his other, um, peccadilloes) and we aren’t Puerto Rico or New Orleans (I don’t call us the Great White North for nothin’), things got back to normal pretty quickly.

I didn’t have a chainsaw that was up to the task back then, but I bought a new one (me and pretty much everybody else around here), and I’ve certainly gotten a lot of use out of it over the years, though I think I cut up more wood in those two weeks in all the rest of my life combined.

So, twenty years later and we’re on the cusp of yet another record-setting State Fair (this is something that we, for some reason, give a shit about around here – and I’m no exception. Must be genetic), with only another 8,000 or so required. It apparently rained a bit last night but no earth-shattering storms, and while it’s once again hotter than hell already this morning, the power – and the air conditioning – are still on, thankfully.

And, just in case, I now have a generator.

But let’s hope I don’t need it.