How I Survived the Storm

Ever since Hurricane Irene shut off our power for a week, Mrs. Banks has been pushing me to buy a portable generator. I am resisting.

I just can’t see myself, the next time some natural disaster or other hits and the electricity goes out, trundling outside into the deluge in the middle of the night and successfully figuring out how to turn the darn thing on. (I have trouble imagining myself even finding a flashlight, now that I think of it.)

Operating machines has never been one of my strengths. Mrs. Banks bought one of those grind-as-you-go coffeemakers a few months ago and the thing’s still a mystery. “Pick the number of cups, select ‘grind,’ and then push the button with the circle on it,” she’s told me over and over, lately with a tone that says she starting to wonder whether she married an idiot. I promise I do exactly as she says and, ten minutes later, either the thing is still just sitting there or the kitchen counter is covered in hot water. Most mornings now, I skip the process entirely and get my coffee at the when I stop there to pick up the newspapers. God bless Art Kean.

Besides, our strategy for getting through Irene seemed to work pretty well even without a generator. Soon after the first heavy breeze, we headed straight to the bar at the The inn has its own power, remember, so that in times of crisis it becomes to New Canaan what the Superdome was in New Orleans during Katrina: a refuge of last resort for the temporarily homeless and dispossessed. (After that Nor’easter last April, I hear the place was a non-stop party.)

Granted, Mrs. Banks and I were neither, strictly speaking, homeless nor dispossessed when Irene arrived, but why take chances? There was no telling how long our ice supply would hold. Besides, with no TV or Internet, I was nearly bedridden with cabin fever by mid-morning. So off to the Roger Sherman it was, as early as we could without seeming desperate. When we walked into the bar, tears of joy welled up in my eyes. The lights were on, the beer and champagne were cold, and the flat-screen was working.

The two of us parked ourselves on stools at the far end of the bar, and for the next nine hours I proceeded to eat my way through the bar menu at a rate I thought entirely appropriate for someone enduring the emotional convulsions of temporary homelessness. “Honey, I have no choice,” I said to my wife when she objected to my ordering a second portion of the crabcake sliders, “The beer has to wash down something. Besides, the food in our refrigerator is going bad. I have to make do with what’s at hand.”

But by early evening, the weather was so tame even I was having trouble maintaining the fiction that we were refugees of the storm. Mrs. Banks said it was time to go. So it was back into the car and home again to spend the rest of the night quietly in the dark.  

Want to be notified next time Conrad posts on Patch? Email him at Conrad-at-ConradBanks-dot-com.