newjerseynewsroom.com

BY WARREN BOROSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

During the hurricane I woke up in the middle of the night and looked at the digital clock. It was dark. So the power had gone out.

I was in a house in Woodstock, N.Y., having fled the day before from my apartment in Hackensack….

The night light wasn’t working, so I went over to the bureau when I had left a working flashlight – and accidentally knocked it to the floor, where I couldn’t find it.

I blundered into the bathroom, then groped made my way to the dining room, found matches and candles that had been left on the table, and retrieved the fallen flashlight. Which was no longer working….

I found another flashlight, put it on the floor next to my bed, and went back to sleep.

***

In the morning, there wasn’t much to eat. Mostly, stuff that didn’t need refrigeration. Bread, peanut butter, cheese, jam, raw fruit, nuts. Everything in the fridge was spoiling.

I drove to the parking lot of a small local shopping center – and right into an enormous pool of water. Fortunately, my car made it out. (I should have looked first.)

Most stores were closed. But a gas station that sold food was open, and some people were hanging around. I walked in looking for a newspaper – and was stopped. The power was out, I was told, and no food was available – except candy. I asked for a Times. I think the other customers were impressed: All I needed was a newspaper!

Without electricity, I learned, life is very, very different.

For coffee, I made a fire in the fireplace and put a pot of water over the flames. The water actually boiled! (Obviously, I’m no outdoorsman. I’m an indoorsman. Or, as someone said, in general bookish people are incapable of repairing toilets. That’s my excuse.) So we had some coffee. Because of mismeasuring, it was too strong.

My favorite nearby restaurants – Joshua’s, Cucina, Little Bear – were closed.

For breakfast, I had a slice of bread and jam – and a small container of yogurt, which hadn’t gone bad yet. For lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. For dinner, various cheeses, bread, and grapes. Not my idea of a Lucullan feast.

I had spent the day next to a large window, reading. Surprisingly, there was plenty of sunlight.

I didn’t have a radio with batteries, so I couldn’t listen to the news.

And I did some things automatically. Turning on lights – unsuccessfully. Glancing at the CD player, thinking of listening to some music. Thinking of heating something in the microwave oven.

Spending an entire day reading is … tiring.

We went for a short walk, but it became scary. When you hear a sharp crack, it’s probably a branch breaking. And recently a cousin had been killed when a branch fell on him. Not even in a storm.

Besides good, hot food, I missed watching TV.

This is the Golden Age of TV watching. I had brought along an episode of “Breaking Bad” from Netflix (I’m catching up), a video of a Bolshoi production of Prokofiev’s “Cinderella,” various DVD documentaries about the Depression ordered from the Hackensack library (the overworked librarians surely hate me by now), and my Roku, intending to see an episode of Adam Dalgleish, the English cop, and various fondly-remembered old movies, like “King of Hearts.”

Nothing doing.

Reading by flickering candlelight isn’t as easy as reading by electric light. (Are you sure that this is what Abe Lincoln did?) And we didn’t want to use up the flashlight’s batteries.

Scrabble? Too tired. Botticelli? Okay, a few games. My opponent objected when I chose Typhoid Mary, and in response to the question, was she a famous cook?, replied yes.

We went to bed early: 9 p.m. I looked forward to daybreak, when I could get so much done….