I've turned the lights off to write this.
The night of the storm was scary. It was power out at 5 of 9 p.m. I switched to flashlights. I also had a battery operated latern to read by which broke 2 days ago when I was changing the batteries. It probably was not unlike a lantern at the Borden house except it didn't smell like kerosene.
I can't read by candlelight. This time I didn't try.
They are dangerous too and were the cause of most of the house fires these last few days.
So I had my books and a lantern and a battery-powered TV which I used for the news.
When the news wasn't up-to-date or I needed different news I went out to the corner and talked to the neighbors. I'd think that in the Borden's day they might have had a chat at the corner as well. Neighbors who needed somethinbg asked and if someone could do something for another, they gave it or did it. It wasn't a reliance, rather more a cooperation.
Since Crowe's yard neighbor was an Ice House, you can imagine my experience with ice was similar to Victorian America.
Everyone needed ice all the time. It's August, for Gosh Sakes!
We were in search of ice and when someone got extra they brought it over. It was to keep the scant amount of food cool day to day. I would suppose if I had a corner market or one in my immediate neighborhood, I would have been buying fresh food daily as the Second Street neighbors did, as well as Mrs. Emery.
We went by car and had to search. We could have taken the horse if we had one.
Now as to that horse- I can't imagine the smell of one after days of heat, humidity, and stress. Otherwise, the experience, I think, was similar. I quickly lost the habit of hitting the light switch every time I entered or left a room; although last night I did catch myself reaching for the switch to turn off a light which wasn't on.
So I read by flashlight and did little movement. The less I moved around, the more comfortable I could keep my body temperature. I kept my windows closed the whole 5 days because the humidity was outrageous and I had a cooler house overall, I think, than my neighbors.
I found that I had to keep the shades closed until about 5 p.m. and then I could open them and get the last of the sunlight in the day in order to read or write.
If the shades were open the room heated up by 5 degrees or more!
I learned to always return whatever I was using back to its exact place so I could find it again easily later. That took some training. I had room sectors in which I would always leave a flashlite and thus could enter a sector, put one down and pick up the next. Everything I needed I tended to keep out for easy access, and I had good recall of which bottle of water in the cooler had been in there the longest and thus was the coldest!
t was always very dark in the house, day or night with the bad weather and the shades and curtains closed. One neighbor kid actually, at my door, asked to look in to see how dark it was in my house. He asked me
"How dark is your house?"
And I had no appetite. When I ate it made me hot- I suppose that was my metabolism kicking in. If I went outside to walk around I did so slowly- I did everything slowly to conserve my energy!
When I came inside I would have to take a quick shower in cold water which I don't think was much different than Lizzie or Alice bathing in their room. I dribbled the water on me and it was cold. I smelled fine but my clothing eventually didn't!
That was odd. I didn't think my clothes were *dirty*, but they began to smell just the same. That part was odd: because I would take 3 of these quick baths a day and ran out of fresh-smelling clothing very fast! If I was clean I wanted to smell clean- but that didn't happen.
I always wear light clothes in the summer, so that wasn't a problem- but I can't imagine what the women did back then!
Everbody was in the same boat- but some had more stress than others due to damage to their homes.
Some people were, as in their everyday lives, stoic and accepting- and others, again as in their everyday lives, were freaked out and scared.
It certainly brought neighbors closer- tho we have a good community here.
We had 90 degree days and thunderstorms every afternoon- heat index at 100.
When they say "It's not the heat- it's the humidity"- Believe it!
