Brandes, Stan, and the Big Snow

Brandes Elitch needs no introduction here. But you may not know that he lives in Yuba county California, in a rather remote town. Last week, when the big storm hit California, he was in the path of the historic snow. On Friday March 3 I emailed him to ask how he was doing. Of course we had heard about the snow, but didn’t realize how devastating it was until Brandes emailed me with this response. Ed.

By Brandes Elitch

Saturday, March 4, 10:50 P.M. You have probably heard about the famous film “Lost Weekend,” but since I have given up drinking, this is not about a Lost Weekend in that sense.

It is about the fact that I had no internet last Saturday, February 25, all day and finally by 7 PM I was so frustrated that I just went to bed. Immediately thereafter, the power went out. We were without power Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and it finally came back on Friday, around 3 PM.

I was not particularly worried, except that this is the coldest week of the year. With no power, there is no heat, no light, no internet, and no music. I got a generator last year but never needed to use it, until now. I thought I had enough wood for the wood stove because, after all, spring is only two weeks away. And I had a little jug of fuel for the generator. The generator was in the back of the garage, and we had to figure out how to get it outside and close to the kitchen. We could not run it in the garage because of the carbon monoxide issue and I could not leave the garage door open. The snow was too deep to move it outside even though it is on its own little wheeled cart because it is so heavy. My friend Randy figured out how to get it from one end of the garage to the other, between the Mercedes and the SM and the washer and dryer and through the side door (amazing).

The wood stove requires an enormous amount of dry firewood and of course has to be constantly fettled to stay hot. You are supposed to keep the wood rack at least 40 feet from the house. In that case, because there was 2 feet of snow in the yard, I would not have been able to get to the rack to bring the wood back to the house. The pellet stove needs electricity to run, as does the hot water heater, obviously.

Meanwhile, we had 2 feet of snow, and many trees went down all up and down the street. My neighbor had her telephone pole go down. A tree fell on the telephone line up the street and the force caused the utility pole to splinter.

There are trees down everywhere here. I am glad that the PG&E contractors took down so many trees here last year and of course that we took down six tall (80-100 foot) pine trees in the backyard. It was 45 degrees here in the house. I could not leave the property because the driveway was deep in snow. Meanwhile, Stan insisted on his usual 4 walkies a day. On one of them, I slipped going down the driveway, even with a walking stick, and went right down on my face in the snow. Stan thought this was a game. I must have twisted my knee because a few hours later I was in deep pain, and I knew I had to have a lie down for an extended period of time. The next day, I was all right though. But since then, I have learned to hate snow, even though I spent 4 winters in Syracuse, which gets 100 inches of snow a year, and it never bothered me then.

I did not want to chance going down the driveway in the snow and I knew that Stan needed to go outside in the morning, so I took a chance and let him out in the backyard unleashed. He knew an opportunity when he saw one, so he ran across the street to Randy and Shannon’s place and killed two chickens. Then he went to my other neighbor Silvia and killed two of her chickens, and not yet finished, he went to her neighbor and killed two of her chickens. Then he came home, very proud of himself. Obviously, he can NEVER be let off leash again for the duration. Shannon has a lot of chickens, and Silvia gave her two remaining chickens to the other neighbor. I talked to Stan about this, and he claimed plausible deniability, but all 3 women saw him in the act so he had no defense, and besides that he had a chicken feather in his fur.

Despite Stan’s indiscretions, Randy and my neighbor Janice brought fuel and wood during the week. Otherwise, I don’t know what I would have done. When I got into bed, I was shivering and had to put twenty pounds of blankets on me to stay warm.

Most of my life has been defined by moments where I say, “This will never happen again,” and this is one of those situations.

Yesterday I had to go to the DMV and H&R Block. Fortunately, Randy anticipated the storm, so he moved the Range Rover I loaned them up to the top of his driveway and plowed it over 2 days with his tractor (it is a long driveway). My Citroen mechanic Lon called and said that the car is finished, and he wants to test drive it, but the registration tag says 1998. (It has been at his shop for the last three years). I was anticipating the worst at the DMV but amazingly I had put it on Non-Op status back then so there were no late fees, which would have been in the thousands of dollars after 25 years. And then when I told Lon that I had just acquired a CX 25 but it had some engine issues, he told me that he has a virtually new CX 25 motor which he took out of a car many years ago. Of course, there are none here since they were never sold here and even in France, they are very rare now. So that was a good day, except a word of advice: do not go to the DMV on a Friday afternoon. They should do something to liven things up there, like a Happy Hour or pole dancing.

When I got home, I could see that the garage light was on, so I had power, and while I was in town, Randy plowed the driveway. I was wondering how I was going to carry two 5-gallon jugs of fuel up the slippery driveway but fortunately that worked out.

It is supposed to snow the next few days, but as long as I have heat, hot water, light, and music, I am okay. The internet has always been unsatisfactory here and I am going to get Starlink when this is over, in spite of my dislike for Elon Musk, creepy little bastard.

And as Cousin John might say, “Life goes on, on there.”

And that was The Week That Was.