Oh give me a home

It is not every day that lightening knocks out the power. We were ready however, and in five minutes we had it accomplished. Helmet light strapped on and exacto knife in hand we wiped off the already loosened conduit cover and scraped the insulation from the now dead wires. Twisted three inches of bared #10 wire around two conductors and electrical taped them up real quick and threaded the wires through a hole methodically filed just below ground level into a trench we had at ready. Just in time as the street lights flickered back on.

Living under a bridge needs patience and a shade of ingenuity. We now have an electrical box fastened to a short pole behind the pile of rocks which we call home. No one's the wiser, except for our cow Bessy and our two cats. We can now have fresh dripped coffee and charge our phone and laptop without trucking across the avenues to the parking lot with plugs. We'll be searching the dumpsters for more modern electrical type inconveniences shortly.

We do need a good little heater for next winter. We're digging a cave, so to speak. Had to shore it up with posts and boards from an unneeded fence up the riverbank. Two sheets of plywood on the floor. Eight by eight is really cozy, we hope. Styrofoam boulder made from twenty sheets glued together and fancied up with a grey spray bomb and lots of sand and dirt covers the entrance. Planted some local shrubs beside it too, just for laughs. Bessy says she'll live outside, she's made friends with the deer in the bush downstream. The cats think it's neat, attracts a few varmints for them to toy with although they're friends with the local skunk.

      Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam

      Where the Deer and the Antelope play;

      Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,

      And the sky is not cloudy all day.

A vaguely religious affirmation of fortitude in the face of peril, it would seem, this life bestowed upon ourselves. The wild west still within our grasp, with some modern amenities. Canned beans are real good. So is the hydro. Just preparing for the new world order, you know, with the bankers hell bent on swindling the western world out of it's superiority complex. Got the ceiling lined with fourteen layers of tin foil under five feet of clay under the concrete span of our bridge, unlikely those infrared heat sensor drones will spot us before they drop from the sky in Armageddon. Just got to make like a fisherman with our pole when we come and go. Trying to figure out how to hide a horse, they're a bit more high strung than an old Hereford.

Making coffee in the morning, seemed to take a long time to get a cup. Plugged the radio into the outlet and it would come on for a minute and then off for a minute and then on for a minute, got us scratching our head. Went for a little stroll down Bessy's path to ponder on it and then we saw it, the lights at the intersection at the bottom of the bridge. If we hadn't hooked into the green light circuit. If we don't get another wicked lightening strike this summer we'll be saving the city a bit of power we suppose.