July 24, 2025 • 24 mins
The harnessing of electricity changed the human experience in fundamental ways. We should be continually thankful for it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is am I and I'm sitting at.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
The end of my driveway.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is Wednesday, the twenty third movie. Traffic is busy
this morning, but I'm also a little bit later than
I normally am. My eight o'clock meeting for this morning
was canceled, yay, because we're trying to wrap up this
little project so here shortly we can start on the
(00:30):
second round of it.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Anyway, that's how things wrong. So we were talking the
other day. Nice watched part she didn't watch a lot.
She did watch part of the new Magnolias series about
the families going and living now on at Light Pioneers
(00:53):
and I I probably won't watch it. I don't anticipate why,
because a lot of times the folks that were that
are chosen to do this kind of thing, you know,
they choose them on purpose because obviously, if they were
(01:17):
really good at living off grid, then there wouldn't be
much drama in the show. And of course you want
drama in your show because it's kind of its purpose.
And so you pick the people who are least likely
to be able to do this, are the ones to
have the most trouble doing it, And you know, there's
a lot of controversy about this series. I may know
(01:41):
you because of the fact that you know, it appears
that they felt the need to be politically correct, when
in reality, in the eighteen hundreds, some of those folks
might have been.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
In jail anyway.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Having said that, and they go off and become pioneers
in the raws in the summertime. Well, you know, I'm
gonna go out on a limb here and say, the
temperature is pretty nice in the Rockies in the summertime,
a whole lot better than it is here in the South.
One of the families is from Alabama, and another family
(02:18):
is from Florida, where obviously, going to spend the summer
in the Rockies no matter what.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
You're doing, would be a perk.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I'm just saying, it was eighty one degrees last night
when I went to bed. According to my phone, it
is already seventy six. We're supposed to be flirting with
one hundred today. We hadn't quite made it up to
one hundred yet so far. I think we were like
ninety seven yesterday, but we've supposed My phone still says
(02:46):
we're supposed to have a couple of days where we're
in the hundreds, and you know, it's July and Texas.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
It's non unusual thing. But the reason why I got
to think.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
About this subject was because one of the families, the
one from Alabama. It's the couple and their kids and
his mother. And apparently she does know what it's like
to live on a farm because she grew.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Up that way, and maybe even he grew up that way.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
But the daughter in law, her the wife of this group,
made the comment apparently she's from town and has always
lived in town. Now I'm getting this from new so
you know this is third hand here. But she made
the comment something about running water, to which your mother
in law said, the only way you go on running
(03:37):
water is you run and go get it. And it
made me think about the fact that one of the
most important things we have to be thankful for in
the twenty first century, and obviously we've had it through
the twentieth century or different parts of the country or
the world headed in the twentieth century. Even people you know,
(04:00):
in the late nineteenth century, if they were rich enough,
had it, and that is running water, water on demand
in your house. You know, houses were built for thousands
and thousands of years without a bathroom because there wasn't
a need to have one. You didn't have water coming
into the house, so it was not a problem. People
(04:22):
had to haul water to various places. Now there were
houses built where they would build a cistern on top
of the house to collect rainwater and then through gravity
that would be fed down through the house and have
running water. But those were highly unusual and generally fairly
affluent people. So the vast majority of folks, as this
(04:46):
lady said, if they wanted running water, they had to
run and go get it. I'll never forget one of
my I have a friend who is from Nigeria. He
I was talking one time about it's interesting to see
how immigrants feel about our school system as opposed to
(05:10):
people who have had speaking of things to be thankful
for people who grew up in this country.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And take it for granted. He and his wife do
not take education for granted.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
And he said one time, when his girls were much
smaller than they are now, that if they didn't think
they could behave in school, he would jerk them up
and take them to Nigeria and show them what it's
like to have to go get water. With a pot
on their head, and I was like, yeah, that ought
(05:46):
to do it anyway. So hauling water is a factive
life in many parts of the world still to this day,
and was a fact of life in this country for
a very long time. So even though it is the
twenty first century and those of us who were still
alive at this point, I don't know that there's gonna
(06:08):
be a whole lot of people in this country now
that remember living without running water. We had running water
by the time I came along. Shortly, either right before
I was born or right after I was born, my
parents put a bathroom, built a bathroom out of a
(06:32):
like a I guess was like a storage room on
the back porch of the house that we lived in
at the time. It had a screened in back porch,
and then it had this room at the end, which
I guess was supposed to be like a storage room,
and they took that and they made it into a
bathroom because we moved from there when I was six,
but I do still vaguely remember what it looked like.
(06:54):
I think they probably had running water in the kitchen
because we did have a well and it had a
well pump. Uh so we did have running water, but
they did not have a bathroom until sometime around the
time I was born, which was in fifty six. So
that's that's another thing. And I remember one of the
things that I think was funny is.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I grew up.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
As I grew up, I remember being told we'd be
outside playing, but if you needed to go to the bathroom,
you came in the house and you went to the bathroom.
Like a civilized human. You didn't even though we still
had the out house, you know, in the backyard, you
did not use the outhouse. You came into the house
and you used the bathroom. It's oh, it was like,
we have come to civilization.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Now we have indoor ployment and we are going to
use it.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
That that always was kind of humorous to me. Anyway,
since this podcast is gonna be what we should be
thankful for. Water on demand is one of the most
important things that we have that for thousands and thousands
of years and even to this day, there are many
(08:02):
places in the world that do not have running water
or do.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Not have clean water.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
That's a whole nother subject right there, and we don't
realize how what a fundamental difference that makes you know
every morning when I get in and I turn on
a hot shower, that's something that people to this day
don't have in other countries or other parts of the world.
That that is something that none of my ancestors had to,
(08:32):
you know, coming.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Up in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Whoa this dog is gonna get run over? That is
a place on this road where there's a dog that
thinks he's got to chase all the cars.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, this time there was a car.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Passing me, and he's gonna chase that car while he
while I came by and he was in the middle
of the road, so anyway, I did miss him. He's
not gonna live long at this point. We're gonna come
by here one day and he's gonna be laying onside
the road.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Debt.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I hate that, and I hate that he you know,
it would not be He probably would not appreciate being
put up. But you know, either being a pin or
be dead, those are your two choices. Anyway, back to
our subjective things, to be thankful for the thing that
makes our lives different. The fundamental difference is electricity. Without electricity,
(09:27):
we would have none of the things that we just
take for granted.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
At this point, and when I.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Got up this morning, well, first of all, electricity charged
my phone so that you know, I could use it
to be an alarm this morning to get up to
get ready for work. And then when I got up,
I turned the light on. And then when I the
fact that it wasn't eighty seven degrees in my house
(09:57):
this morning was because I had central heat and air
emphasis on air.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
This time of the year.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Even if I wanted to have a fan, I would
have had electric I would have had to have electricity
to run the fan. So nothing happens in our lifetime
without electricity. The factories that build the devices we use.
I'm driving to work, I wouldn't have a vehicle if
(10:28):
if there was an electricity to run the factory that
made my vehicle, I wouldn't have gas to put in
my vehicle. If there wasn't electricity to refine the gas
from oil in the first place and to haul it
(10:52):
to the gas stations, there wouldn't be There wouldn't be
any gas if there was an electricity to pump the
gas the gas out of the tanks in the ground
to put it in my car. So there's nothing that
we do that does not use electricity in some form
or fashion. It is the thing that makes our lives
(11:16):
what it is. You know, we've talked about the grid,
that what happened if the grid went down and all
that kind of stuff, and people say, oh, well, you know,
we'd be thrown back to the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
We really wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
We'd be thrown back to the Middle Ages, even in
the eighteen hundreds. And I did a series on this
because I talked about a book that was in the
public domain and it was kind of a collection of
stories that were made up, but it kind of gives
you an idea of how people lived at that time.
(11:52):
And it was basically the late eighteen hundreds, and they
had infrastructure. Okay, yes, my vehicle thought I was gonna
run over somebody, but I wasn't. Anyway, it's gonna be
in I've got to see if I can get to
(12:13):
work today. I've had two very interesting events.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
On this road.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
That one was a non event, even though my vehicle
thought it was an event. But the dog in the
road was a legitimate event anyway. So there was infrastructure
in this eighteen hundreds, in the late eighteen hundreds that
in many cases we don't have at this point. First
(12:40):
of all, the man in these stories rode the train
into New York City to go to work every day.
Now they quote lived in the country, but what they
actually did was like live in the suburbs because they
had neighbors and houses around them in whatever. They just
didn't live, you know, in the city New York. So
(13:03):
this was you know, they had stores. They now they
didn't have Walmart, but they did have a butcher, and
they had a baker, and they had all the different
it was individual stores, but it was still they had stores.
These stores had goods in them because those goods were
brought in from various and sundry parts of the country
by train. So their reliance was on rail and not
(13:30):
as ours is normally owned highways with trucks and stuff.
We have some rail, but we don't have rail like
they used to have rail. I think I heard that
in most towns that mail used to be delivered at
least twice a day, and the reason was it came
on the morning trainer, came on the afternoon train. Well
(13:51):
see that's not even that's a foreign concept. Does we
don't even think about being able to get mailed twice
and mail to us is not really all that important
now because most everything's done online, including communication. But again,
online would not exist if it wasn't for electricity. So
(14:13):
our use our grid and our use of that grid
is the fundamental entity that runs everything else in our lives.
There's so much that we would not have. I don't
even know where to start. In fact, a little over
a year ago, when you can go back and listen
(14:34):
to those episodes if you want to, their entitled Emma
Goes off Grid, it's when my electricity was out for
five days. It was horrible and the first couple of days, well,
the first probably day Tuesday, wasn't bad, wasn't awful because
it wasn't so hot.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
But we had three storms back to back to back.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
And when the after that last storm, it's kind of
like what happens after a hurricane. It was extremely humid,
but it cleared off and so the sun is shining,
so you've got the sun shining and all this water
and the humidity was just horrific. And that is one
of the biggest things that an HVAC system does, is
(15:20):
it pulls the moisture out of the air. And when
it does that it makes it a little dryer. A
friend of mine and I were talking yesterday. She's a runner,
and she was talking about running the other day after work,
and I was like, well, I don't think I could
do that. But I was in the tomato patch after work,
so I wasn't running, but I was at least out
(15:42):
in the sun. And it's hot, and the worst part
of it is the humidity. And as she said, the
hotter it gets this summer, the last humidity we will have,
and that will at least off set it. It won't
seem so bad because you know, ours has been like
ninety two, but the.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Heat index has been one hundred and three.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
So it's the humidity that makes the heat that much worse.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
The joke is people always talk about how hot it
is in Arizona, and they'll say, oh, but yes, that's
a dry eat Well, heat is still heat, but there
is a there is something to that argument that humid
heat is way worse than just dry heat. So the
(16:31):
most important things that I'm thankful for are that are
blessings that I and I do truly, I do think
about this every day when I get in the shower
and I turn the shower on I think, oh, there's
nothing better than hot and cold running water, okay, And
(16:54):
that is absolutely the truth. Even when I had I
had water because when my electricity out to my house,
it was not out to my well, so we had
water running, but we'd have an hot water, okay, And
now it.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Was hot and I was hot. So when I got
in the shower, it felt.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Really good to be in the cool water because it,
you know, would help.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Cool me off.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
But you have to realize, and this is something there's
a lot of memes about takes his water in the summertime.
You'll see one that says it'll show a picture of
a faucet and it'll have hot and not so hot.
And if you're talking about city water, that is the truth,
because city water will not ever really get cold. It's
(17:40):
kind of like in the summertime, it's kind of like well,
luke warm. It's not as hot as the hot water,
but it's certainly not cold. Well, my water's coming up
out of the ground, and so when you get past
the hot part of the water from you know, running
in the pipes or maybe in the hose or whatever
if you're outside, when you get to the water coming
up out of the ground. That water is cold, and
(18:02):
so if you're standing in the shower, it's a shocking cold.
But just having water run it in itself is a
miracle that many many people in the rest of the
world don't have, and that those of us who do
(18:23):
have take for granted. Probably one of the things I
hear people are when I'm watching prepper things on YouTube
and whatever. One of things I hear people say is,
you know, test out your stuff. Well, that makes sense,
(18:43):
it's a good idea to test things. But they'll say,
turn your electricity off for the weekend. And my first
thought is, no, I don't believe I want to do that.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Now.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
I was without electricity for five days, and I know
what that's like. I did learn a lot from that exercise.
It is not something that I want to do on purpose.
I do not want to be miserable if I don't
have to be, you know. Having said that, I'm not
much of a camper either. But one of the things
(19:17):
I do realize is how important it is to make
sure we have ways to mitigate that if at all possible.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Well, obviously the most.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Important thing to have is some way to generate electricity.
If you need to do that. Think about when people
did not have running water, what could they First of all,
they had to haul the water into the house for
all uses in the house. That would be washing the dishes,
that would be washing yourself, that would be drinking water,
(19:50):
that would be all the different things that you have
to do with water. Last night, you know, when one
of our nightly rituals this time of year is to
go through all of the tomatoes that are ripening on
the table, on the tomato table in the dining room. Uh,
we had to branch out and have more tables cause
(20:12):
we ran out of ring. And we'll gather up all
the ones that are ripe and then bring them in
the kitchen and wash them off and core them and
put them in ziplot bags and then put the ziplot
bags in the freezer. So when we get ready to
can something, all you have to do is thumb out,
skins pop off of them and you're.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Good to go. Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
So that's the thing that we will be, you know,
that's the thing that we're doing. But what am I
doing with water while I'm going, Well, I've got the
water running because of the town, I'm.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Washing off the tomatoes.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
If I did not have running water, I would have
to do that a different way.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
The thing about the water running is that I'm actually
able to I don't wanna wash the estimated in the water.
I watched the last tomatea in. I want it to
be fresh water. So, uh, that's important to do. We
have some parking issues today because our.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
And there's still some. I wonder if I can go around. Yes,
I can.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Half our parking lot has been blocked off because we're
gonna be doing all kinds of construction here, construction being
a fun thing anyway.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And I did not get here early enough to get
a good parking space, so I'm in.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
The secondary parking. So just being able to do that
would not be a small thing. Okay, I would have
to figure out some way to, you know, rash so
(21:59):
much water or tomato, because I couldn't just have the
water running and wash my tomato and court and put
it in the bag wash the next tomato. I would
not have that luxury. And it's one of those things
that we I do just take for granted that when
you turn on the faucet, water's gonna happen. Okay, I
(22:22):
turn on the lights, which light is gonna happen if
I set the thermostad on the wall, that it's gonna
be cooling my house. There's just many, many things that
electricity does for us. I think the list is unlimited
of all the things that we have, all the luxuries,
(22:44):
all the blessings that we have that we would not
have without electricity. So after singing the praises of electricity
all this time, I'm gonna say, of all the things
that we need to prep that is the most important.
When I didn't have electricity for five days, honestly, thinking
(23:07):
about cooking, suff something was like the last thing on
the list. It was hot, and I might have wanted
to have, you know, throw some mayonnaise and lunchmeat on
a couple of pieces of bread and call it a sandwich.
One things I said I wished for is I wished
I'd had some cereal with some milk for breakfast because
(23:31):
I wanted I didn't want anything hot. I didn't want
anything involved. You know, the last thing you want to
do is heat up the house. That's in this part
of the country, in the south, one of the things
that people used to do is they either cooked outside
in the summertime or bigger, more affluent houses had outdoor kitchens.
The kitchen was a separate building from the house, and
(23:55):
while fire danger was a big part of that, just
keeping the house from heating up was a whole was
like one of the most important things.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And so we don't think enough.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I don't think enough about how grateful I should be
for the blessing of electricity, okay, and making sure that
I have it to use.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
All the time.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Having said that, I'm gonna stop at this point because
it is time to go to work and what I
do for a living is on the Internet, and without electricity,
there wouldn't be in an internet.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So I will talk to you tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
We're gonna try to do Texas History Thursday for the
third time and see if we can get this one
to work.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I talk to you tomorrow.
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is am I and I'm sitting at.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
The end of my driveway.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is Wednesday, the twenty third movie. Traffic is busy
this morning, but I'm also a little bit later than
I normally am. My eight o'clock meeting for this morning
was canceled, yay, because we're trying to wrap up this
little project so here shortly we can start on the
(00:30):
second round of it.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Anyway, that's how things wrong. So we were talking the
other day. Nice watched part she didn't watch a lot.
She did watch part of the new Magnolias series about
the families going and living now on at Light Pioneers
(00:53):
and I I probably won't watch it. I don't anticipate why,
because a lot of times the folks that were that
are chosen to do this kind of thing, you know,
they choose them on purpose because obviously, if they were
(01:17):
really good at living off grid, then there wouldn't be
much drama in the show. And of course you want
drama in your show because it's kind of its purpose.
And so you pick the people who are least likely
to be able to do this, are the ones to
have the most trouble doing it, And you know, there's
a lot of controversy about this series. I may know
(01:41):
you because of the fact that you know, it appears
that they felt the need to be politically correct, when
in reality, in the eighteen hundreds, some of those folks
might have been.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
In jail anyway.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Having said that, and they go off and become pioneers
in the raws in the summertime. Well, you know, I'm
gonna go out on a limb here and say, the
temperature is pretty nice in the Rockies in the summertime,
a whole lot better than it is here in the South.
One of the families is from Alabama, and another family
(02:18):
is from Florida, where obviously, going to spend the summer
in the Rockies no matter what.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
You're doing, would be a perk.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I'm just saying, it was eighty one degrees last night
when I went to bed. According to my phone, it
is already seventy six. We're supposed to be flirting with
one hundred today. We hadn't quite made it up to
one hundred yet so far. I think we were like
ninety seven yesterday, but we've supposed My phone still says
(02:46):
we're supposed to have a couple of days where we're
in the hundreds, and you know, it's July and Texas.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
It's non unusual thing. But the reason why I got
to think.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
About this subject was because one of the families, the
one from Alabama. It's the couple and their kids and
his mother. And apparently she does know what it's like
to live on a farm because she grew.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Up that way, and maybe even he grew up that way.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
But the daughter in law, her the wife of this group,
made the comment apparently she's from town and has always
lived in town. Now I'm getting this from new so
you know this is third hand here. But she made
the comment something about running water, to which your mother
in law said, the only way you go on running
(03:37):
water is you run and go get it. And it
made me think about the fact that one of the
most important things we have to be thankful for in
the twenty first century, and obviously we've had it through
the twentieth century or different parts of the country or
the world headed in the twentieth century. Even people you know,
(04:00):
in the late nineteenth century, if they were rich enough,
had it, and that is running water, water on demand
in your house. You know, houses were built for thousands
and thousands of years without a bathroom because there wasn't
a need to have one. You didn't have water coming
into the house, so it was not a problem. People
(04:22):
had to haul water to various places. Now there were
houses built where they would build a cistern on top
of the house to collect rainwater and then through gravity
that would be fed down through the house and have
running water. But those were highly unusual and generally fairly
affluent people. So the vast majority of folks, as this
(04:46):
lady said, if they wanted running water, they had to
run and go get it. I'll never forget one of
my I have a friend who is from Nigeria. He
I was talking one time about it's interesting to see
how immigrants feel about our school system as opposed to
(05:10):
people who have had speaking of things to be thankful
for people who grew up in this country.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And take it for granted. He and his wife do
not take education for granted.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
And he said one time, when his girls were much
smaller than they are now, that if they didn't think
they could behave in school, he would jerk them up
and take them to Nigeria and show them what it's
like to have to go get water. With a pot
on their head, and I was like, yeah, that ought
(05:46):
to do it anyway. So hauling water is a factive
life in many parts of the world still to this day,
and was a fact of life in this country for
a very long time. So even though it is the
twenty first century and those of us who were still
alive at this point, I don't know that there's gonna
(06:08):
be a whole lot of people in this country now
that remember living without running water. We had running water
by the time I came along. Shortly, either right before
I was born or right after I was born, my
parents put a bathroom, built a bathroom out of a
(06:32):
like a I guess was like a storage room on
the back porch of the house that we lived in
at the time. It had a screened in back porch,
and then it had this room at the end, which
I guess was supposed to be like a storage room,
and they took that and they made it into a
bathroom because we moved from there when I was six,
but I do still vaguely remember what it looked like.
(06:54):
I think they probably had running water in the kitchen
because we did have a well and it had a
well pump. Uh so we did have running water, but
they did not have a bathroom until sometime around the
time I was born, which was in fifty six. So
that's that's another thing. And I remember one of the
things that I think was funny is.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I grew up.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
As I grew up, I remember being told we'd be
outside playing, but if you needed to go to the bathroom,
you came in the house and you went to the bathroom.
Like a civilized human. You didn't even though we still
had the out house, you know, in the backyard, you
did not use the outhouse. You came into the house
and you used the bathroom. It's oh, it was like,
we have come to civilization.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Now we have indoor ployment and we are going to
use it.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
That that always was kind of humorous to me. Anyway,
since this podcast is gonna be what we should be
thankful for. Water on demand is one of the most
important things that we have that for thousands and thousands
of years and even to this day, there are many
(08:02):
places in the world that do not have running water
or do.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Not have clean water.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
That's a whole nother subject right there, and we don't
realize how what a fundamental difference that makes you know
every morning when I get in and I turn on
a hot shower, that's something that people to this day
don't have in other countries or other parts of the world.
That that is something that none of my ancestors had to,
(08:32):
you know, coming.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Up in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Whoa this dog is gonna get run over? That is
a place on this road where there's a dog that
thinks he's got to chase all the cars.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, this time there was a car.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Passing me, and he's gonna chase that car while he
while I came by and he was in the middle
of the road, so anyway, I did miss him. He's
not gonna live long at this point. We're gonna come
by here one day and he's gonna be laying onside
the road.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Debt.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I hate that, and I hate that he you know,
it would not be He probably would not appreciate being
put up. But you know, either being a pin or
be dead, those are your two choices. Anyway, back to
our subjective things, to be thankful for the thing that
makes our lives different. The fundamental difference is electricity. Without electricity,
(09:27):
we would have none of the things that we just
take for granted.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
At this point, and when I.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Got up this morning, well, first of all, electricity charged
my phone so that you know, I could use it
to be an alarm this morning to get up to
get ready for work. And then when I got up,
I turned the light on. And then when I the
fact that it wasn't eighty seven degrees in my house
(09:57):
this morning was because I had central heat and air
emphasis on air.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
This time of the year.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Even if I wanted to have a fan, I would
have had electric I would have had to have electricity
to run the fan. So nothing happens in our lifetime
without electricity. The factories that build the devices we use.
I'm driving to work, I wouldn't have a vehicle if
(10:28):
if there was an electricity to run the factory that
made my vehicle, I wouldn't have gas to put in
my vehicle. If there wasn't electricity to refine the gas
from oil in the first place and to haul it
(10:52):
to the gas stations, there wouldn't be There wouldn't be
any gas if there was an electricity to pump the
gas the gas out of the tanks in the ground
to put it in my car. So there's nothing that
we do that does not use electricity in some form
or fashion. It is the thing that makes our lives
(11:16):
what it is. You know, we've talked about the grid,
that what happened if the grid went down and all
that kind of stuff, and people say, oh, well, you know,
we'd be thrown back to the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
We really wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
We'd be thrown back to the Middle Ages, even in
the eighteen hundreds. And I did a series on this
because I talked about a book that was in the
public domain and it was kind of a collection of
stories that were made up, but it kind of gives
you an idea of how people lived at that time.
(11:52):
And it was basically the late eighteen hundreds, and they
had infrastructure. Okay, yes, my vehicle thought I was gonna
run over somebody, but I wasn't. Anyway, it's gonna be
in I've got to see if I can get to
(12:13):
work today. I've had two very interesting events.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
On this road.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
That one was a non event, even though my vehicle
thought it was an event. But the dog in the
road was a legitimate event anyway. So there was infrastructure
in this eighteen hundreds, in the late eighteen hundreds that
in many cases we don't have at this point. First
(12:40):
of all, the man in these stories rode the train
into New York City to go to work every day.
Now they quote lived in the country, but what they
actually did was like live in the suburbs because they
had neighbors and houses around them in whatever. They just
didn't live, you know, in the city New York. So
(13:03):
this was you know, they had stores. They now they
didn't have Walmart, but they did have a butcher, and
they had a baker, and they had all the different
it was individual stores, but it was still they had stores.
These stores had goods in them because those goods were
brought in from various and sundry parts of the country
by train. So their reliance was on rail and not
(13:30):
as ours is normally owned highways with trucks and stuff.
We have some rail, but we don't have rail like
they used to have rail. I think I heard that
in most towns that mail used to be delivered at
least twice a day, and the reason was it came
on the morning trainer, came on the afternoon train. Well
(13:51):
see that's not even that's a foreign concept. Does we
don't even think about being able to get mailed twice
and mail to us is not really all that important
now because most everything's done online, including communication. But again,
online would not exist if it wasn't for electricity. So
(14:13):
our use our grid and our use of that grid
is the fundamental entity that runs everything else in our lives.
There's so much that we would not have. I don't
even know where to start. In fact, a little over
a year ago, when you can go back and listen
(14:34):
to those episodes if you want to, their entitled Emma
Goes off Grid, it's when my electricity was out for
five days. It was horrible and the first couple of days, well,
the first probably day Tuesday, wasn't bad, wasn't awful because
it wasn't so hot.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
But we had three storms back to back to back.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
And when the after that last storm, it's kind of
like what happens after a hurricane. It was extremely humid,
but it cleared off and so the sun is shining,
so you've got the sun shining and all this water
and the humidity was just horrific. And that is one
of the biggest things that an HVAC system does, is
(15:20):
it pulls the moisture out of the air. And when
it does that it makes it a little dryer. A
friend of mine and I were talking yesterday. She's a runner,
and she was talking about running the other day after work,
and I was like, well, I don't think I could
do that. But I was in the tomato patch after work,
so I wasn't running, but I was at least out
(15:42):
in the sun. And it's hot, and the worst part
of it is the humidity. And as she said, the
hotter it gets this summer, the last humidity we will have,
and that will at least off set it. It won't
seem so bad because you know, ours has been like
ninety two, but the.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Heat index has been one hundred and three.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
So it's the humidity that makes the heat that much worse.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
The joke is people always talk about how hot it
is in Arizona, and they'll say, oh, but yes, that's
a dry eat Well, heat is still heat, but there
is a there is something to that argument that humid
heat is way worse than just dry heat. So the
(16:31):
most important things that I'm thankful for are that are
blessings that I and I do truly, I do think
about this every day when I get in the shower
and I turn the shower on I think, oh, there's
nothing better than hot and cold running water, okay, And
(16:54):
that is absolutely the truth. Even when I had I
had water because when my electricity out to my house,
it was not out to my well, so we had
water running, but we'd have an hot water, okay, And
now it.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Was hot and I was hot. So when I got
in the shower, it felt.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Really good to be in the cool water because it,
you know, would help.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Cool me off.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
But you have to realize, and this is something there's
a lot of memes about takes his water in the summertime.
You'll see one that says it'll show a picture of
a faucet and it'll have hot and not so hot.
And if you're talking about city water, that is the truth,
because city water will not ever really get cold. It's
(17:40):
kind of like in the summertime, it's kind of like well,
luke warm. It's not as hot as the hot water,
but it's certainly not cold. Well, my water's coming up
out of the ground, and so when you get past
the hot part of the water from you know, running
in the pipes or maybe in the hose or whatever
if you're outside, when you get to the water coming
up out of the ground. That water is cold, and
(18:02):
so if you're standing in the shower, it's a shocking cold.
But just having water run it in itself is a
miracle that many many people in the rest of the
world don't have, and that those of us who do
(18:23):
have take for granted. Probably one of the things I
hear people are when I'm watching prepper things on YouTube
and whatever. One of things I hear people say is,
you know, test out your stuff. Well, that makes sense,
(18:43):
it's a good idea to test things. But they'll say,
turn your electricity off for the weekend. And my first
thought is, no, I don't believe I want to do that.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Now.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
I was without electricity for five days, and I know
what that's like. I did learn a lot from that exercise.
It is not something that I want to do on purpose.
I do not want to be miserable if I don't
have to be, you know. Having said that, I'm not
much of a camper either. But one of the things
(19:17):
I do realize is how important it is to make
sure we have ways to mitigate that if at all possible.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Well, obviously the most.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Important thing to have is some way to generate electricity.
If you need to do that. Think about when people
did not have running water, what could they First of all,
they had to haul the water into the house for
all uses in the house. That would be washing the dishes,
that would be washing yourself, that would be drinking water,
(19:50):
that would be all the different things that you have
to do with water. Last night, you know, when one
of our nightly rituals this time of year is to
go through all of the tomatoes that are ripening on
the table, on the tomato table in the dining room. Uh,
we had to branch out and have more tables cause
(20:12):
we ran out of ring. And we'll gather up all
the ones that are ripe and then bring them in
the kitchen and wash them off and core them and
put them in ziplot bags and then put the ziplot
bags in the freezer. So when we get ready to
can something, all you have to do is thumb out,
skins pop off of them and you're.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Good to go. Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
So that's the thing that we will be, you know,
that's the thing that we're doing. But what am I
doing with water while I'm going, Well, I've got the
water running because of the town, I'm.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Washing off the tomatoes.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
If I did not have running water, I would have
to do that a different way.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
The thing about the water running is that I'm actually
able to I don't wanna wash the estimated in the water.
I watched the last tomatea in. I want it to
be fresh water. So, uh, that's important to do. We
have some parking issues today because our.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
And there's still some. I wonder if I can go around. Yes,
I can.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Half our parking lot has been blocked off because we're
gonna be doing all kinds of construction here, construction being
a fun thing anyway.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And I did not get here early enough to get
a good parking space, so I'm in.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
The secondary parking. So just being able to do that
would not be a small thing. Okay, I would have
to figure out some way to, you know, rash so
(21:59):
much water or tomato, because I couldn't just have the
water running and wash my tomato and court and put
it in the bag wash the next tomato. I would
not have that luxury. And it's one of those things
that we I do just take for granted that when
you turn on the faucet, water's gonna happen. Okay, I
(22:22):
turn on the lights, which light is gonna happen if
I set the thermostad on the wall, that it's gonna
be cooling my house. There's just many, many things that
electricity does for us. I think the list is unlimited
of all the things that we have, all the luxuries,
(22:44):
all the blessings that we have that we would not
have without electricity. So after singing the praises of electricity
all this time, I'm gonna say, of all the things
that we need to prep that is the most important.
When I didn't have electricity for five days, honestly, thinking
(23:07):
about cooking, suff something was like the last thing on
the list. It was hot, and I might have wanted
to have, you know, throw some mayonnaise and lunchmeat on
a couple of pieces of bread and call it a sandwich.
One things I said I wished for is I wished
I'd had some cereal with some milk for breakfast because
(23:31):
I wanted I didn't want anything hot. I didn't want
anything involved. You know, the last thing you want to
do is heat up the house. That's in this part
of the country, in the south, one of the things
that people used to do is they either cooked outside
in the summertime or bigger, more affluent houses had outdoor kitchens.
The kitchen was a separate building from the house, and
(23:55):
while fire danger was a big part of that, just
keeping the house from heating up was a whole was
like one of the most important things.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And so we don't think enough.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I don't think enough about how grateful I should be
for the blessing of electricity, okay, and making sure that
I have it to use.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
All the time.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Having said that, I'm gonna stop at this point because
it is time to go to work and what I
do for a living is on the Internet, and without electricity,
there wouldn't be in an internet.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So I will talk to you tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
We're gonna try to do Texas History Thursday for the
third time and see if we can get this one
to work.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I talk to you tomorrow.
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