"Ice Ice Baby!"

Ice Ice Baby!

If you text message or use Facebook, you are familiar with the terms “OMG!” or “LOL!”. I have seen a lot of those over the last four or five days as people have described the damage and hardship that this most recent winter storm has caused. The damage to trees has been the most noticeable thing as you drove around the frozen country side. The broken limbs just could not bear the weight of ice that coated them. And, of course, when you have ice and wind in rural Oklahoma, or rural anywhere for that matter, you have power outages and this one may have been as widespread as I have ever seen. We bought our place almost 10 years ago and aside from the occasional windstorm and short-term disruption in electric service, we have not been out like we have this time. In fact, at the time you read this, there may still be folks, and even entire communities, without power.

We were some of the lucky ones because we did have a generator and we do have a fireplace. Sometimes we burn our fireplace for ambiance or just simply to have something to back up to on a cold night but rarely do we burn it out of necessity. In fact, I am amazed at how much wood you can go through when you have that dude going 24/7. Between a couple of chuck wagon cookouts and the last two winter storms, we have learned a great lesson in preparation. I bet I have been through three ricks of wood in the last three months. I am afraid that my knee jerk reaction to that will be what the people up north call a “rick yard”. I bet that I wear out a chainsaw in the next few months because I do not like cutting wood coated with ice. You would be surprised what you can do when it is below freezing and your wood pile is dwindling fast. I am glad that I knew where most of the dead mesquite trees were on my place. Ironically, there will be plenty of deadfalls from the hackberries that fell at my front gate to the broken mesquite trees that will provide several weeks of chainsaw fun on the Armes’ farm. It has been a little like deer camp at our house and we have had hot biscuits almost every morning, as well as sausage and eggs. You just never know when your Dutch oven skills will come into play just to feed your family.

They say the good ole’ days were like that and I am sure that they were but I do not want to go back and try it. Five days so far without electricity has been enough to really try my patience. It is really hard to stay up and positive when every move you make requires extra work. Here’s a quick little “for instance” for ya. I headed over to one of my leases the other day to get a couple of round bales and lo and behold a huge tree limb had fallen right in front off the hay. So, therefore, I was thinking to myself, I will drag it out of the way with a chain. Normally, I would just reach in the back of the pickup, grab the chain and do the job. But when the chain is frozen, even that little chore requires breaking it loose with the back of an ax. Of course I got the job done but as we say in the great Southwest I was “give out before I even I even stabbed the bale”. What should have been five minutes turned into 20. It seems like in an ice storm like this, everything is like that, extra effort at every turn. The heaviest weight on me as I prepared to head to Oklahoma City to dock with the mother ship, which is what I jokingly call re-entering the capitol, was “here I go to the big City with all the electricity I want, hot showers, plenty of hot coffee and all things warm while my family is back at home in the dark with no real way to know when the power will come back on, whether it will be hours or days”. It has been a little tough but I do have a job to do, so off I go!

As bad as it sounds and as much whining as I am doing about this current situation, I have friends over in Jackson county in the Altus and Navajo area that may be looking at weeks. Francie Tolle, who is the head of the state FSA told me that they were without power for 21 days one time. So, it can last that long. My prayer is that it doesn’t for us or any of our neighbors. I guess the saying is true, “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”. One thing I feel compelled to say is once again my hat is off to all those guys, and even some girls, who work outside for the electric companies, whether it is municipal or a rural co-ops, that brave all these conditions to try their best to restore power. My wife’s dad was a lineman for Cotton Electric for about 30 years and I know how tough that job is. But, they do it without a peep or complaint and we need to thank them. In a time like this, they are the heroes. So, if you are one of the lucky ones with the simple luxury we call electricity, do not take it for granted and enjoy it. If you are one of the unlucky ones that are still out, hunker down and hang on and know that the Calvary is coming. It just may take them a little time to get there. But, they are whippin’ and spurrin’ as hard as they can.

If you would like to contact me while I am at the capitol, please do not hesitate to send an email to donarmes@house.gov or call me at 1-800-522-8502.

And here’s a little something to think about as you go down the road:

"When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”-G.K. Chesterton