Thats the night the lights went out in Georgia...

That's the night that the lights went out in Georgia...
Posted 8/10/2008 11:47 PM EDT on Planet Green

For the record, you can't currently view this on PlanetGreen.com, but you'll be able to eventually!

Anyways... we have had some pretty severe thunderstorms here in GA lately. Last Saturday we had 60+ mph winds, torrential rain and hail, lightning... It was pretty wild out and we ended up losing power. We sat staring out the window (like we shouldn't have) into the gloom and watching as pieces of siding flew around the backyard. We felt helpless and distraught, figuring we had a $1000 insurance deductible in our immediate future.

After about half an hour the storm had blown over, the lights were still out. There was nothing to do but go investigate the damage. We were relieved to find that the siding in the backyard and littering the street was not from our house. We began to gather it all up and made a pile by our driveway so its owner could reclaim it if they wanted. In a matter of minutes nearly everyone
on our street was out checking for damage, helping clean up, and actually talking to eachother (you know, like you imagine neighbors really do somewhere in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe).

It didn't take long for everyone to find out the owner of the damaged house was out of town. One neighbor got him on the phone to let him know what had happened. Some of the more resourceful neighbors set to trying to put a tarp over the big exposed area of the house.
It was astonishing.

Once we had straightened up our yard, we headed back in to see what our son was up to. He had actually picked out a boardgame for us all to play! We used to play boardgames at least once a week, but now that he is a sophisticated 9-year-old he generally has "better things to do".

So we played a few games of Cadoo... even though it is almost a little too easy for all of us now. The sun had set, the power was still out... and you can only sit around in the dark by the light of an LED lantern for so long, so we decided to go out.

Driving through the neighborhood you almost would have thought there was a block party going on. People were tailgating in their driveway, some were just leaning on the mailbox having a beer and chatting with the guy next door. There were actually kids of all ages playing ball in the street. For the first time in 4 years of living here I finally had a sense of community.

When we came home an hour later, people had finally gone in. It was 10pm and the power had finally come on after being out for 3 hours.

It's a shame they don't make one of those universal power switches for a whole neighborhood.... It would be nice if we could power everything down and actually have a true community once in awhile.