, Reporter
11-04-2009
For most of Friday, almost every one in Ruston who didn’t have a backup electrical generator returned to the Stone Ages.
After what seemed like a month and a half of non-stop rain, the downpour became too much, and the lights in Ruston dimmed.
More than 12,000 city utility customers were without power Friday after moisture from torrential rain knocked out the city’s main transformer on North Trenton Street.
No one died, there was no breakdown in social order and anyone who needed help could still rely on their local emergency responders to arrive within a matter of minutes. People also cooperated with one another in traffic, despite the fact that no traffic lights were working.
Regardless, we still went back to the Stone Ages — well, what most of us would consider the Stone Ages — say around 1994.
Most of us had to do without our Internet, Cable TV and telephone landlines. Our cell phones, Blackberries, iPhones, etc., worked to a limited extent, but they certainly weren’t operating at full capacity.
All of that, however, was a good thing.
People need reminders about what life was like when times were primitive — especially anyone under the age of 20. Yes, kids, there once was a time when some of us never left home without a stack of quarters in case we needed to make a phone call at the nearest phone booth.
Our society today is saturated with technology. Your average 10-year-old might not grasp or appreciate life as it was before 1994. That’s why it’s good to pull them away from such devices from time to time.
Going without technology for half a day is one thing — but one might wonder how anyone currently under the age of 20 might have handled the infamous power outage of 1998.
Most of Lincoln Parish (and most of the South, for that matter) was out of power for almost two weeks during a brutal ice storm that Christmas. Most of us were only then becoming acquainted with this thing called the Internet and didn’t mind if we went a week or more without it. We were more frustrated because we had to shower in the dark in below freezing temperatures, while we also lost hundreds of dollars worth of groceries in our non-functioning freezers.
Christmas 1998 was the worst Christmas ever, but we handled it well.
What if the same thing happened again, especially now that so many of us rely so much on new technology?
What if we had to go a week or more without updating our Facebook or Twitter status?
What if we had to wait more than 15 minutes to know about the latest current events?
Even worse, what if we had to use an actual map instead of a GPS to find our way to any given destination?
If the events of Friday are any small indication, the residents of Lincoln Parish probably would not have the kind of complete nervous breakdown that Jack Nicholson’s character had in The Shining after months of isolation from most of society’s luxuries.
Everyone should go without modern day conveniences from time to time — it makes us appreciate what we do have even more.
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