Yesterday was the fourth and final Saturday in my series of electricity-free days; the series was a personal protest against America’s fossil fuel policies and the corporations profiting from them. During the final day, two extraordinary things happened. First, I nearly spoiled all the food in the fridge. Second, I discovered things about my father’s childhood that closed the gap of time.
Yes, when I woke, I unplugged the refrigerator (along with the coffee maker, computer, and TV). Surely, I thought, the food will survive inside the chilled box for twenty-four hours. By late afternoon, the interior was 57 degrees. Water saturated the freezer. Milk appeared to curdle before my eyes. Not wanting to waste food, I re-plugged the machine and then listened to the disconcerting sound of the compressor running continuously, playing catch-up. I likely spent more watts than I saved.
A lengthy conversation with my dad was much more rewarding. It became an intergenerational exploration of America’s transformation these past seventy years, a handing down of his perspective of radical change.
As a boy, my dad spent most of the year as a city kid and shared close quarters with his mother and grandmother in a third-floor apartment planted in the shadow of Chicago’s Wrigley Field. He enjoyed light switches and a coal furnace to ward off cold. A delivery man brought ice for an icebox. His was a fortunate setup because the landlord modified the structure of their apartment with running water and a working toilet; the raised floor in the bathroom made space for the additional plumbing.
But, from ages seven to twelve (1936-1941), my father spent summers living and working on a farm outside Elida, Minnesota. When school ended in May, my dad and his grandpa drove dirt roads to a hundred-acre oat farm in Minnesota. It was owned by friends of the family. The electricity grid didn’t come close to reaching the farm.
There, everyone pretty much woke and went to bed with the sun. Candles and kerosene lamps offered light when darkness came. The nights were cool and my dad slept on a pile of blankets next to the wood stove in the main room. The woman of the house made all the meals upon the kitchen’s wood fired oven and stove. Plus, every afternoon at three she hollered “coof-fee!” and men would come in from the fields and rest a while over fresh-baked goodies.
Three horses dragged the plow to seed row upon row of grain. The separator that skimmed cream from milk to make butter had a hand crank; tending to it took an eternity. The farmer cut ice from the lake in winter when it was a foot thick; he stored the ice underground and kept blocks separate with layers of sawdust. Every evening from five to six o’clock, my dad listened to kids shows broadcast through a battery-powered radio. On Friday nights, folks went to town for dinner and a movie. It was here that my great-grandpa quizzed locals to learn which lakes had fish and the location of hidden paths to the water’s edge. My father and great-grandfather spent their Saturdays harvesting perch.
I don’t share these details to romanticize life before electricity or suggest that the whole of society should live off the grid. The physical demands of farm life before electricity were brutal. What I marvel at is how dramatically the world changed over the course of one man’s life: my dad’s. Judging from his comments, he is in disbelief too: “You can’t IMAGINE!” he exclaims along with “It’s AMAZING, I tell you.”
In 1941, the last time my dad visited the homestead in Minnesota, the farmer had a gas-powered generator and a dozen batteries for storing energy; a new technology, each battery was the size of a garbage can. The man also installed a motor on the cream separator so the days of tedious hand cranking were no more. The farmer replaced the horses with a tractor and paid my dad to drive the combine. Also, the route to and from Minnesota expanded into the divided highway system I recognize today.
So, my experiment living four electricity-free days didn’t turn out as I had planned. Sharing my house with a partner who didn’t participate kept me from throwing the home’s breaker, made the effort more of a personal practice of managing light switches, appliances, and my cell phone. A watt meter in week two revealed the unwanted draw of machines plugged in but not in use. A Labor Day visit with four-generations of family at a lakeside cabin–a Saturday when I couldn’t unilaterally force an electricity-free day upon others–led to insight about my deeper desire for conversation with the people I love about the climate emergency. This week’s interview with my dad drove home the extraordinary pace of invention, the escalation of America’s energy consumption.
For most of history, humankind’s settlements were invisible from space. My father’s childhood experiences are a great reminder that things haven’t always been this way; society’s dependence upon fossil fuel is a relatively new development. Given the ready and proven green alternatives of tidal, solar, and wind power it is not hard to imagine a future of sustainable innovation.
For week four of this electricity-free day experiment, I give myself the grade of…whatever. It’s never been about the grade. It’s been about the spiritual journey to grow mindful of my relationship to electricity.
