“Current” Events

By Clyde R. Moore First Published December 12, 1980…Fairburians deprived of watching Sunday afternoon pro football, with their “tube” darkened by loss of electricity had a substitute sound-and-sight pastime: Listening and looking as tree branches snapped and dropped.…Chinese (Siberian) elms, which had survived previous ice- or wind-storms, seemed to have suffered the worst from the ice; another variety of trees are affirming the saying, “Ashes to ashes.” Hackberries were surprisingly susceptible; pin oaks survived well, many helped by loss of top-level leaves earlier in the fall. Lowest-bending — and breaking the least —were the members of the “Birch Society.”…One local resident who went to bed to stay warm hadn't reckoned on the lack of comfort in an unheated waterbed.…Along with electrical storms, weather like Sunday's and Monday's would be my "unfavorite" time to be a utility lineman. For those particular days— and one or two afterward — the line crews were providing their own “current events.”…Also valuable was the work of the street crews clearing streets and terraces.… Consider the plight of a Fairburian who had two saws in his garage he wanted to use Sunday to free electric wires from fallen branches in his yard. Trouble was, the lines were draped over his garage roof — which is metal.…Rural water district customers west of Fairbury had a two-day normal useage supply in the storage tank near Gladstone. North of Fairbury, the line depends for pressure on a pump located two miles north of 29th Street — on a Fairbury rural electric line.

Lieselotte Dewald

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