Metro Atlantans who lost power Wednesday cooked soup on fondue sets, charged cell phones in cars and did their best to occupy the kids with old-fashioned amusements like crayons.
Many who didn’t lose power simply took the day off, doing their best to ignore the frightful storm outside. The Good Samaritans came out, as they always do, picking up supplies for neighbors, driving people to work, and cutting down branches that were pressing on power lines.
With memories of the last big storm still raw, many were glad to be cooped up at home, rather than shivering in gridlock.
Dydra Virgil and her husband, John, lost power at about 7:30 a.m., but had a strategy for every challenge that arose. They used the fondue set for coffee and soups. They listened to the news on a battery-operated radio. They even watched a movie on the iPad.
Plans for a cold night included cooking dinner outside on the gas grill, and then sleeping in the basement by the gas fireplace.
Meanwhile, their hilly street, Kanawha Drive in Stone Mountain, became the site of some impromptu Olympic-style events.
“We’ve got a downhill and a luge — with trash can tops,” she said.
Even in a town immobilized in ice, people went the extra mile for one another.
Jeremy Lewis saw his neighbor, Trudie Thibodeaux, using a stick to bang ice off branches that were pulling down the power line to her Decatur home. So he brought out his pole saw and sped things along on the magnolia tree. After all, she had provided the neighborhood kids with several sleds, and they were having a ball.
“We all look out for one another,” Thibodeaux said, thankful she didn’t lose power on a day she had to finish a graphic design project.
Then Lewis saw another neighbor walking to the MARTA station with an overnight bag in hand. She had to get to work at Northside Hospital. He offered her a lift in his old Land Cruiser, and they took off.
Living without power is no picnic, and even as they coped, some felt the strain.
With each passing hour, Kirsten Ott Palladino’s 1939 home in East Point grew cooler. She bundled up her twin 2-year-old boys, brought out the coloring books and hid her iPhone under a couch cushion (the kids like to play with it.)
But she worried about the coming night. And even as her family sang the A-B-C song, she thought about her own heart problems, concerned that should something happen, she could not get help quickly.
Tara Smith shot out of her home in Grayson when the power failed, heading to her brother’s house in Decatur. Then the power went out there, and she watched, layered in extra clothes, as daylight faded away and the cold came inside. Her thoughts turned to what an extended power outage could mean: “pipes bursting, food spoiling, freezing inside temperatures, inability to get around.”
But over near Powder Springs, D.F. Lane felt secure. His bathtub was full of water, and he had newly purchased oil lamps and some extra blankets at the ready.
“We have no reason to go out of the house at this point,” said the retiree. “We’re ready for a power failure. We’ll just roll ourselves up in blankets.”
Some people just couldn’t stay inside.
David Terraso got restless and took a stroll from his Candler Park home. Little Five Points looked like a wintry dead zone, but the bar at Manuel’s Tavern was popping. Turns out, owner Brian Maloof posted on Facebook that anyone who arrived by 11:30 a.m. received the first draft on the house.
The bar was full by 11:15.
The Kroger on LaVista Road was open, but the scene was a far cry from the panicked buying of Monday and Tuesday. Only about a dozen hardy — or tardy — shoppers had braved the slushy roads to stock up on supplies.
The Ace Hardware store on Scott Boulevard in Decatur opened for a few hours. A lot of people wanted generators. Some said they couldn’t bear to be without their Internet.
Then came four 20-somethings bursting through the door.
“Sled-able objects?” one of them called out.
And later, over in Stone Mountain, Virgil got her power back at roughly 5 p.m.
“Life will resume as usual,” she pronounced.
Of course, with more snow and sleet in the forecast overnight, she and all of metro Atlanta would have to wait to see what that “usual” looked like.
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