What to do when the lights go off

For several days now we have had afternoon thunderstorms with rain and lightning. The rain we need but not the "fireworks". A storm came up real fast this afternoon, while Jim was trying to finish cutting the grass. He had to stop yesterday when it stormed. Again he had to stop before he was able to finish.

TV sitting on top of car

We had a terrible storm with high winds and heavy rain. Trees were uprooted over the area and lots of limbs fell. Our electricity was off for about 3 hours. While waiting for the power to be back on, we looked for things to do that didn't require electricity. We were most anxious to learn about storms in our area and wanted to know if they were gone, etc. We were unable to hear any weather news on the battery radio. I remembered that our little b&w kitchen TV had a power cord to connect to the car battery. We went outside and hooked the TV up to the cigarette lighter and voila! instant TV. We tuned in Channel 12 in Montgomery for local news at 5 pm and guess what. There was a golf game going on and no weather news until the game was over.

Jim and James watching TV outdoors

We must have caused some stares by motorists passing by when we sat on the front porch in rocking chairs, looking at TV on top of our car in the carport, while we were without electricity. We heard all about things taking place in Montgomery today but there was little news about our really bad thunderstorm. We did learn that there would be more rain throughout the day. And every day next week except Tuesday.

We watched as our neighbors trees blew over in their yards and big limbs fell. Part of our wooden fence fell when one of the posts broke off at the ground level. All afternoon you could hear chain saws buzzing in the neighborhood.

One good thing about the rains, we haven't had to water the flowers or lawn in a long time. The grass was never greener. Keeps Jim busy on his riding lawn mower. Today he was 2/3 finished and by the time it dries up from all the rain today, he'll have to start all over again.