Swimming with Hydro (aka That’s why they call it Power)
© 2005 by John Boland
 

(Suggested music – Light Up My Room by Bare Naked Ladies,  Undercurrent by Tower of Power, and Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News)

When I was 2 years old, my family had been camping at lake country outside of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The story goes that we saw a cottage for sale and my Father decided to have a look at it. My Mother and the 3 kids (me as the youngest) stayed in the car. My Father returned after ‘too long’ with 3 kids in the back seat, and we headed back to Ottawa. The story continues that part way back, my Mom asked my Dad how did that cottage look. My Father replied that it was so nice that he had bought it. Now, my Father was a lawyer so we weren’t starving but we certainly weren’t rich. So, my Mother’s reaction was something like, “You did what!?! (I never heard my Father or Mother swear, but being as I was 2, I cannot myself vouch for the one time she may have.)

The thing was that my Father had had a brother who drowned when they were both young, and my Father was frightened of the water and of swimming. So he was determined that his children would grow up not frightened of water. Hence the purchase.

As it turned out, the 3 or 4 thousand that he paid was in the long run considered a steal, as it was the nicest cottage on the beach and had a beautiful sand beach. It is pine tongue and groove, outside and inside, with hand made furniture made by the owner. Now It’s still what I consider the nicest cottage on the lake, despite the rich buying up every last inch of lake front (except the extra 200 feet we have). Unfortunately, my father only enjoyed it for 10 years longer as he died at an early age. And when my Mother died, I buried her ashes there with a nice view of the pines and water. At that point, it became a sanctuary to me, a point that my sister has never understood.

So now owning half the cottage, I was also responsible for half the bills, which had become much higher as recreational property sky rocketed, courtesy of rich baby boomers who had not inherited waterfront. I am responsible for the Hydro bill which until recently was an Ontario Crown Corporation (quasi government owned) called Ontario Hydro. I have had 3 interesting encounters with Ontario Hydro, and these are them:
 
 

1) The Pole
As with most hydro, it comes in on a series of poles, one placed on the border of our property and the next. It’s nothing to write home about. It leans a bit in the sandy soil and shows signs of wear. The cottage didn’t come with hydro, so I believe this pole was put in by Hydro when my Father installed running water and such. Making the pole only slightly younger than me, at 55.

And I began to get Hydro bills, which often seemed an unreasonable concept, given the where I lived Hydro bill already sitting ‘in the bills to be paid’ pile. One winter, feeling quite assertive, I decided to call Hydro and ask why every winter I would get a $100 bill when no one was there and the hydro was shut off. I didn’t tape the conversation as Spalding Gray may have, but I believe I can recount it practically verbatim. HR will represent Hydro Rep. and Me will represent me.

Me: Yes, I’m calling to enquire about a hydro bill I just received.

HR: Yes.

Me: Well, it is for $100 and I find that confusing as it is a summer cottage and the hydro is always off from Thanksgiving to about May 24th.

HR: Do you have a pole?

Me: Yes, I believe we have a pole. That’s how the hydro comes in.

HR: Well, that’s it. You have a pole, you get a bill.

Me: So in other words, I can call this a rental for the pole?

HR: You can call it anything you want, but if you got a pole, you get a bill.

We exchanged other pleasantries before the end of the brief, yet ‘enlightening’ conversation. It occurred to me right after that maybe we could build our own pole, until I realized the chances of having that approved were zero. Just a cash cow or in this case a cash pole. And just now, reading this, I realized that the neighbors probably shared the same pole. So Hydro was double dipping the pole.

Twenty years later, we still have the same pole, and I still pay rent. Every year, upon my first arrival day, I try to bless that pole, right after blessing the lake, my Mother’s grave stone, the tongue and groove, the pine trees and just about every other little thing…(except the water mosquitoes = jet skis)…

2) The Trench
My brother in law is very talented and one of those talents is building. Combine that with the inability to sit still, and the cottage gets many improvements. Once, my spouse took a book that was called The Finnish Sauna (which we strictly kept for the plans, not for the nude pics), she changed the title to the Finished Sauna and left it out in a prominent location – the outhouse as the brother in law insists on saving the septic system. By the next year, the sauna was ready to fire up.

So next project was an addition to make the bathroom bigger and add workshop, big water heater (hydro!) and washer and drier (hydro!). And while he’s at it, why not add 200 amp service and put the hydro line underground up to the pole (of course hydro would never go underground beyond that point as that would give up the sanctity of the pole).

Now, when I arrived for an extended fall/early winter visit, the pipe for the hydro line had been dug and buried. For some reason, my memory is vague so I don’t remember the reason, I had been instructed to dig this whole trench up again as another wire had to be placed there. And the trench had to be 2 feet deep. It had already been dug and filed so it sounds easy. It wasn’t. The installation meant there was no hydro in the cottage and hence no heat as electric heaters  were the only viable source of heat, and only if I sat right in front of them. I’ll leave out the lack of running water, toilet, lights and such.

So, as I was working, I would rush back to get some digging in before dark, as candle light didn’t seem to help the digging. Then by the first weekend, I was almost finished after 2 solid days of digging. And suddenly, the local plumber/electrician pops in to see how the job’s going as he had to install 2 little gizmos that only an electrician could do. Then he explained that we would have to now wait for Hydro to do the final hook up. He told horror stories of someone across the lake waiting for over a year, but admitted that 6 weeks should do it. So I’d have heat and everything maybe by Xmas! Great. I wrote on the list – go but $3000 fireplace insert so as to avoid freezing to death. Just as the electrician was leaving, he asked me why I was digging the trench so deep, my answer being that I had been told too. Good answer. Wrong answer. My mind wandered to Spalding Gray’s Terrors of Pleasure  where one of the local workers when he finds out that the furnace is in the attic, says:

“You’re shittng me!”

My plumber just said, “Heck, that only has to go 6 inches deep…”

So now the wait was on for Hydro to show. I phoned their regional office that was hundreds of miles away, and since they’d never heard of the village the cottage was near to, I gave them very detailed directions. As they agreed to send someone out on a specific day, I took that day off work, and sat outside waiting. After hours in the cold, I saw a Hydro truck drive by, appearing to be totally lost. As I chased it, I realized they weren’t coming back and I was really just chasing the day’s wages I had lost.

I did actually manage to get the guy on the phone later. I don’t remember but it was some kind of miracle I guess. Well, he had got no directions and no address so he had just driven around the lake – about 52 miles - hoping for the best I guess. And he needed another order from head office to come out and besides it might well be another worker. So I did the last thing possible. Got my spouse in warm, sunny Victoria, BC, where everything is way more expensive except the hydro’s cheaper. This is somewhat equivalent to letting the dogs out. Within a short period of time, she had the Vice President of Ontario Hydro on the phone. At that point, he probably would have promised anything. She settled for an exact day and time in the next few days for a worker to be there and do the 5 minute hook up. I think she even got his phone # at home and his cell # just in case there were “any further problems”.

So I took more time off work, but not quite trusting my good fortune, this time I put my beach chair by the side of the road, and held up a big sign saying ‘HYDRO HERE’. Turns out I was smart. The installer had been given no directions. Nice guy. Actually lived nearby. He did his thing and I went inside to enjoy Power. Couldn’t enjoy any water though since so much time had now past that the electrician/plumber had turned the water off to keep it from freezing. But he was very impressed by the speed in which I’d got Hydro out there. I didn’t tell him about the Vice President as I decided to be kind to the guy (the VP that is)…

The Sale

NO, I didn’t sell the cottage. Are you nuts? But the neo fascists government of the time sold Ontario Hydro and they are fucking nuts. Don’t know if they sold it to Enron like the neo fascists in BC did, but they sold it.

And I knew why. It’s a good idea to unload losing propositions if you’re a government dedicated to unloading debt. Kind of like cutting the disabled off of their pensions, and disallowing them to go onto welfare as to get welfare, you had to have been working.

Now, I also knew that ducking might also be in order as whoever bought Ontario Hydro, would also want to unload the debt. And how could a monopoly on electric power get so into debt? – one word – nuclear. Yes, Ontario Hydro had been pioneers in nuclear power plants. And they were proud of it. After all, wasn’t it Canada that sold Candu reactors to India and Pakistan based on their on their solemn promise never to use them to build nuclear bombs. Gee, bzzz, wrong. In fact, the last time India and Pakistan were fighting over a piece of glacier in Kashmir, reports are that Pakistan was 46 seconds from launch when they got a message from the Chinese indicating that such action might be unwise if they didn’t want to be totally nuked themselves by China and overrun by that small million soldier Chinese army.

Ontario Hydro even put up helpful signs in a Provincial Park where a reactor just happened to be next door. The billboard on the way in said “If you hear alarm, roll up windows” Comforting. So thoughtful.

Then there was the nuclear waste. Just no one seemed to want it in their backyard. Even Handford, WA, was filled up with a 2 billion $ waste bill. And no one even wanted to send into space or pay for some nice new rockets. Then there was this moth-balling problem. The damn reactors wore out and they didn’t seem to be able to rebuild them. I think they blamed it on Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or that liberal movie China Syndrome. They couldn’t even ship them to third world countries who wanted to make bombs. Ontario Hydro just couldn’t win.

So, as I said, the neo fascists finally unloaded the whole thing to some Corporation. Now, the good thing about corporations is that they have no guilt whatsoever and rarely get jail time for sociopathic behavior. And they can pass on debt with no political repercussions or any other repercussions, as they are still a monopoly. Sure, there are old hippies with damns and silly windmills and they have to buy back a little power hear and there, but the consumers make sure there is always a high demand. The summers are too hot and the fucking winters are too cold.

And that’s exactly what they are doing. Passing on the debt. Remember that $100 bill I used to get for the ‘rental’ of the pole. Well, now it’s $200 as I guess they had to increase the rent a bit. And, they cleverly added an item marked ‘debt payment’. So now I am fortunate enough to get to pay off that darn nuclear debt at $8 a bill. I guess when you multiply that by millions of bills, it’s worth it. They probably even have an actuary who can tell them when the baby boom bulge can pay off all the debt, and then they can put that $8 towards something more constructive in the future, like competing with the Yanks with coal fired smoke stacks and even, if they’re really lucky, go back to building nuclear and selling pretend bomb plants to the third world.

For my part, I’ve taken a strong stand. Remember how I use to bless that rented pole after I had blessed practically everything else, save the jet skis (water mosquitoes).  Now I ignore that pole, use candles and write stories. It just makes me feel all warm again…

Fall, 2005, Vancouver Island
As all my stories/monologues, this is dedicated to my spouse and daughter and Spalding Gray. And this time I’ll throw in David Sedaris for showing me that it’s possible to write about reality.
 

John Boland
www.spaldinggray.com
www.johnboland.com