Transcript

File: biggarjackie06-oh-poweroutages_M.mp3

Speakers:

JB – Jackie Biggar

KP – Ken Perlman

Years ago the power used to go off, we didn’t have a – A storm, a transformer would get hit by lightning and stuff. There’s be a severe storm, the power would go out for two or three days. Every supper after night[fall] we’d have the thing goin', probably get the fiddle out two or three hours and Dad would play, or [my sister] Joyce would play the mandolin, or Mom would play the mandolin. I remember one night the power was off and the thunder storm just rollin', eh, just crisp, crisp, crisp. I'd be 7 I guess, and Dad was sittin’ there playin' the fiddle and Joyce was playin' the mandolin, and the lightning hit the transformer outside the house, like the same distance from here to the road [points through the window to the street outside his house]. It’s a big pole there, like a transformer. And they both B off the strings of the instruments and they got a shock off the strings, off the fiddle strings and the mandolin strings, the pair of them. They got hoisted terrible. The whole arm [felt] gone, and you didn't dare going near the telephone. Oh the phone would ring all night, the whole time that storm was there. Every time she crackled the phone would ring but there was nobody there, it was electricity going through the lines. We used to have storms years ago, terrible storms. After that, [when there was] thunder and lightning, no more playing instruments, cause they got a hell of a hoist. It was half an hour, an hour before the feeling started to come back. The whole arm,the left arm was tinglin' from the electricity. But every time the power would go off in the winter or summer, we always had the lamp in the cupboard and fire it up, and get the fiddle and the mandolin'.