Blackout

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The story I’m going to tell you is about what happened after the lights went out. I’m going to tell you what happened to our beautiful green world and the people that called it home. Understand, it’s not a happy story and there is no moral. It’s not that kind of story.

We had a ranch house on Piccamore Way which was perfectly middle-American, perfectly middle-class, and perfectly dull…something we were all just fine with. Excitement is for people who haven’t seen forty. After that, you want peace, you want contentment, you want sameness. Piccamore satisfied those needs completely. There’s comfort to be had knowing that the paperboy would always toss the Courier in the bushes, missing the porch by a country mile. That Al Peckman would be washing and waxing his candy apple red ’67 Camaro in the driveway every Saturday morning. That Iris Phelan would always have her TV cranked up so loud that you could hear it three streets away. That Billy Kurtz would always come stumbling up the walk at six sharp each day after finishing his shift at the mill (and finishing six or seven Bud longnecks at the Bar None). That the Eblers would plant so many flowers in their front yard—daylilies and black-eyed Susans, baby blue eyes, forget-me-nots, and sweet peas—that the chromatic vibrancy would make your eyes ache. And that Ray Wetmore was even then planning another run at the county board even though he’d barely cracked a hundred votes the last time around.

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