The entire northeastern United States lost power at about 5:15PM. At the moment the power went out I happened to be in Windsor, Connecticut driving home for supper. I had a sociology class that evening at "The Branch" which was what everybody who went there called the Hartford branch of UConn. I was not your model student, and I was happy to learn the extent of the power failure because it meant I didn't have to go to class. It was a beautiful night, mild with a full moon, and the outage was an adventure. A bunch of us got together after supper and built a fire in an outdoor fireplace on the Loomis campus which is down the street from the house where we used to live. Somebody managed to scare up a few beers, and we sat around talking, drinking Bud, and enjoying the spectacular night.
I think there might have been some speculation that the Russians were behind it. After all, it was only three years earlier we had the Cuban missile crisis. But when the bombs didn't start dropping we started blaming the squirrels, thinking one of them got into a transformer and set off a chain reaction. Would have been some squirrel. Apparently it was a power surge that found design flaw in the grid.
Another rumor had it that the birth rate in the northeast spiked nine months later. That didn't happen either. While some people were stuck in elevators and subways, for most it was an adventure not a crisis, and it was over in about 12 hours. Classes at The Branch resumed the next day.
Side note: In those days nobody ever heard of UConn. The Big East had not been born, UConn was part of the Yankee Conference, and basketball was not big. I attended a Manhattanville homecoming in New York City with my girl that fall. When she introduced me to her friends she mentioned that I went to UConn. "And you came all the way from Alaska!?"
I, too, am a UConn alumnus. However I did manage to make it to the Storrs campus.
I remember that night of the balckout all too well. We lived in Attleboro, MA at the time. Our phone number was very similar to that of the local power company sowe received dozens of calls complaining about the power outage. Needless to say, my mother was very gracious to the folks calling. At one point she stopped telling them they'd dialed the wrong number and repeated the information we'd heard on my transistor radio - the blackout was widespread and the power company was doing all it could to restore service.
Posted by: DCE | November 10, 2004 at 07:41 AM
Your mother sounds like a wonderful lady.
Posted by: Tom Bowler | November 10, 2004 at 05:25 PM