It was a dark and stormy night, Wednesday.

Our power stayed on throughout that night and then flickered off Thursday morning, September 26, 2024, just before 9:00 AM. But it came back on 10 minutes later. I thought we were safe. Then 50 minutes after that, at around 10 AM, it went off again, and it stayed off for the next 18 hours.

We quickly found the flashlights and changed their batteries. The day passed. We had no power, no phone service, voice or text. We had charged all of our devices in anticipation of the storm and a probable loss of power. We'd gotten all of the flood warnings as our phones received those, but nothing else.

The devices were all charged but could connect to nothing, so we read or played games on our tablets first and then on our phones. We had two charger packs, and they were ready to recharge the tablets, which we would drain first.

Nancy brought in the lightweight, small outdoor side tables with their glass tops at 2 am when the thought about the glass tops struck her.

I happened to have gotten up at 4:00 in the morning cuz that's what old people do, and I sat in my easy chair to check on my phone to see if I had internet service, which had also gone out earlier the day before. No internet, no telephone service, and as I sat there 2 or 3 minutes after I'd sat down, the power went back on at 4:04 in the morning. I waited to see if it would flicker. It didn't.

None of our food was spoiled in either of our two refrigerators. The Ice Cream was still solid. I know, I checked.

On Friday, late afternoon, Nancy's son came by with his wife and our oldest grandchild to do a welfare check on us to see how we were doing. Of course, everything was fine other than not having cable TV, the Internet, or any telephone service, although some text messages leaked in. I saw that I had voice messages but couldn't connect.

Our phone service provider was not operating, but the 'other guys' were, and the neighbor across the street had many visitors as she generously shared her smartphone with many neighbors across our little enclave of 42 houses on our circular street. If we had a gate, we'd be a gated community.

While my wife and I are not the youngest, both in our 70s, there are not very many here who are younger. It's the place to go locally when you finally decide to finally downsize and live on just one floor, with no steps up or down for ingress or egress.

The kids had been to a nearby town for his work, and they had seen all the devastation but definitely not the worst of it for all of North Carolina. Flooded streets, rivers, and creeks way past their banks, many trees down, portions of houses and entire cars crushed, and power lines sparkling on the wet streets.

We are in the eastern portion of the Western 3rd of North Carolina, up in the mountains, the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. That part, the western part of North Carolina, has been where the worst damage has occurred. Towns like Asheville and Boone, which are the most well-known tourist destinations, have borne the brunt of the storm from Hurricane Helene and the prior storm just days before that hurricane hit.

Friday evening, our 3rd of four grandchildren came to visit us, along with two of his cousins and a girlfriend. They were in search of fast food, but of course, nothing was open because nobody had any power. So they stopped by to check on us for about 15-20 minutes and then went on their way to visit a grandmother who had a generator and didn't live too far from us.

My wife's daughter came by on Monday with our youngest grandson and his girlfriend and showed us pictures of the local devastation, especially up at our lake, Lake James, and the pictures of the houseboat that we had given them 6 years back. The lake was over Full Pond by over 10 feet. The houseboat was about 15 feet higher than normal, and it floated high over the walkway, high on the bank used to get to it.

Lake James was officially 110.7 ft, and it's at the 100-point mark where the lake is at what is called Full Pond, and anything above that should be going over the spillways and making its way from our lake, the first lake in a chain of seven lakes, down through those seven lakes two and past Charlotte, North Carolina and finally joining the xxx River on its way to the Atlantic. We sit just east of the eastern continental divide, so our rainwater flows more directly to the Atlantic and not via the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico on its way to the ocean to our east.

I was enjoying the day, sitting outside working on my tan on a beautiful Indian Summer day on Sunday, the last day of September.

On Monday, neighbors came over in the afternoon for snacks and about four hours of Dominos. It was my turn to win. Just before our games broke up, our Internet came on, but not the cable TV or our phone service, other than some emails and some text messages.

It was weird not hearing any news, sports scores, or anything normal. It made me think about the bigger big picture in life. It reminded me of that time period in my life when I lacked much control over most aspects of my life, when I was in the US Navy back in the early 1970s, in boot camp, and on my ship overseas.

One learned to roll with the punches and the rolling seas and not fight any of them or any loss of control; otherwise, bad things could happen. Stay calm and stay smart, and don't get distracted or too damn inquisitive.

We feel very lucky and a great deal of concern and compassion for the people whose lives have been so uprooted. Many of the people in our family and in our network of friends and their network of friends and family in these here parts will be relying on insurance and FEMA to help them weather this storm and start the long road to rebuild their lives, livelihoods, and property.

We've got a bunch of leaves in our soaked yard and in the street gutter in front of our house. And that was it. It's a damn shame to think that Project 2025 has plans to do away with government agencies such as FEMA. All the more reason to get off your ass and go help others register and to get to the voting polls and stop THAT madness.

We will be fine. Thanks for the dozens and dozens of you thinking of us and checking in. Sorry about our tardiness in responding. Roger, over and out.