What you
gonna do when the lights go out?
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Stand on the
curb of any street in any town in Mexico and look up. No, not that high. Those are just the
ubiquitous buzzards, turkey vultures, also fondly, tongue in cheek, called the
Mexican Eagle.
Yes, lower
down, that’s what I want to show you, the leftover-spaghetti-mess of wires
criss-crossing overhead, connecting each habitacion to power, cable, satellite,
internet and phone services.
When I lived
in an apartment on a busy street In Mazatlan, for entertainment, I watched the
men from CFE (electricity) or Telmex or Megacable climb a pole across the
street and add another wire, string it across to its destination, and Voila,
another connection made without removing any unused wires. Why not reuse a
former wire? Not for me to know.
On some
streets, the overhead wires resemble strange art installations. I imagine
creatures in an UFO trying to decipher a message written in unknown tongue.
Here in our
tiny colonia on the rancho, it’s no different. From poles at the entrance, at
dirt-street intersections, overhead from house to house, spaghetti. I try to
ignore the implications. The wires carry what they are designed to carry, so
why worry.
History. I’m
told at one time not that long ago, all the houses here (seventeen, not all
inhabited at present), were hooked up to one electric meter. The residents
figured out a system to pay the monthly bill. Rumor has it that bill-paying
time generated a clutch of arguments, disagreements and on occasion,
fisticuffs.
Which
eventually led to separate meters for each residence. One spaghetti, two
spaghetti, and whenever a casita gets a new resident, three spaghetti, four!
No shock or
surprise to me when I returned from a two-week holiday in Mazatlan, and the
power went out. Let me modify that. MY power went out. Only mine.
An
interruption of electrical power is a nuisance. But one copes.
Called Josue
to rescue me. He fiddled around and replaced a little black rectangular thingy
inside the larger gray box. Said he’d not seen one of those burn out before and
let me know there might be a problem that caused this problem, but for now, I
had electricity again, and as soon as he had time, he’d run a check on my wires.
Twenty four
hours later, my lights went out again. This was not a CFE problem. This was a
personal problem.
My thoughts
veered to the strange. A mere three weeks ago I launched myself into space and
put out my head lights—crash!—on a marble tile floor. Did I, in a past life,
put out someone else’s lights? Is the Great Wizard-person of Life trying to get
me to examine my conscience? Have I a problem that needs illumination?
(Undoubtedly!)
While I’m
being weird, Josue examined the wires, beginning at the source, and found the
seat of my problem, a hot seat, so to speak. Out at the main breaker, where a
wire, a ground and a wire, go into the big meter, one of the wires had burned
to a crisp.
Josue explained.
When those men from the past, Joe and Charlie and Ernie and Harry and Tom, once
they’d cooled down from inept fisticuffs, after all, they were all in their 70s
and 80s and it was not a pretty sight, decided to install individual meters,
they went on the cheap. Why use copper wire and brass fittings when aluminum is
a mere fraction of the cost?
Meanwhile,
Josue and Leo ran a homemade rig from the power source next door to my electrical
box and stole power for me so I’d have lights overnight and could keep my
refrigerator running. I’ve seen worse solutions put into action.
Josue bought
proper wire and parts and within a few hours had restored my service, complete
with copper and brass in appropriate places. He fixed me up without adding to the
overhead strings of noodles.
You might
wonder about, you know, Code? I suggest you don’t ask. I might have to fight
you.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
October 3,
2019
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