Finally, the blackout Wendy's story

(OK, I know this is really late. But, a good story like this is timeless. Besides, with the power off for five days right after this happened, then the move and week without the Internet at our new house and then five more days in Washington DC, I can only blog so much. The picture is Izzy looking out the front door during the blackout week.)

The power kicked off somewhere around 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 14.
The wind was howling, but there were no tornadoes or lightning strikes to make me think something really bad was happening.
Apparently, Louisville wasn’t prepared for 80 mile per hour winds, either.
With no power, there was no TV and no Internet. The one radio that had batteries was working, but it was Sunday afternoon so many of the stations were on auto pilot and didn’t carry live news.
As a result, I had no idea how serious it really was until later.
By calling the power company on my cell phone, I learned that a steadily climbing number of people had lost electricity.
Hallie, Izzy and I had to eat at supper time and, with no power decided to go to a restaurant. Unfortunately, everyone else in Kentuckiana decided to do the same thing.
We passed Culver’s, which was full but had power. We passed lots of empty places that were empty and dark. We passed a Wendy’s that was full of people and cars and decided to keep going.
My bright idea was to go across the river to Indiana, thinking that they were on a different power grid, and maybe weren’t hit so hard.
I was wrong. Everything was out along I-65.
All we could find was a packed Wendy’s along Lewis and Clark Parkway in Clarksville.
We pulled into the parking lot, which was full. We decided to avoid the also-full drive through lanes. They were packed with cars out of the parking lot and into the access road.
Hallie parked, and I ran inside. What I saw was something I had never seen before.
The line stretched through the little maze of handrails and back toward Wendy’s front windows. It actually curled a little, turning back toward the main enterance, which is where I got in line.
As I recall, it was about 5:50 p.m. or so when I got in line. Seeing how long it was, I almost didn’t, but I figured no place else would have a shorter line and by the time we left to find someplace else, I might as well have waited in line. I almost went back out to the car to tell Hallie how long the line was, but I decided against it when a few people cane in behind me. With a line this long, I didn’t want to fall even a few people behind.
Needless to say, I was hungry and cranky and I didn’t want to stand in close quarters with a bunch of people. But, there was no other choice, so I waited.
There are only so many ways to amuse one’s self while standing in a line like that. I decided to observe the people around me.
There was one family sitting at a table and eating their supper. I imagined that with a line like that, they probably felt really conspicuous and maybe a little guilty as the people waiting slowly moved past them. I watched as the couple’s daughter picked all the cheese off her cheeseburger and refused the rest. Normally, it wouldn’t make an impression, but I almost asked to take the remaining sandwich off her hands and eat it. It seemed like not eating available food in a crisis like that (It may not have been a crisis, but it seemed rather urgent anyway.) should be punished. Then I realized I should just relax about it. I was overly cranky from being hungry, excited and trapped in along like with a bunch of people, this was a five-year-old and the power would probably come back soon, anyway.
I continued to stand in line watching the clock tick. It was now after 6 p.m. I guesstimated I’d probably be out of the line by 6:15 p.m. or so.
Human nature is certainly interesting. An old woman got her tray and walked past me with it. She had waited in the Godawful line for who knows how long at that point. What did she order? Not a bunch of food. Not anything that seemed like comfort food. Not even anything filling. She carried on her tray a baked potato and a small Frosty.
All I could think of was, “She waited all that time for that?” I also thought she could have gotten the heck out of the way so someone else who really wanted food could eat.
I continued to watch as people came in and out. By this time, I was about halfway through the line, but not up to the handrail maze yet.
An old man, helped by a woman who looked like maybe she was his daughter, got another strange order. He ordered a plain hamburger and a cup of water. Now why on earth did he wait that long for that? And, take up a valuable position in line that I could have been using? He could have had peanut butter and jelly at home, for crying out loud. The power had only been off a few hours. The jelly couldn’t have gone bad yet.
There was one person behind the counter who was talking to the customer waiting in line. She was a somewhat middle-aged woman who was running around doing her best to keep everything moving. It was slow going anyway, but she was certainly working hard.
Every so often, she would holler to the patrons thanking them for waiting and promising to take their orders as soon as possible.
As I got closer to those precious handrails, people began moving past me to get to the bathroom. Back and forth they were walking, and I had to make a hole for them to get through. I started wondering how many of them washed their hands for one; and for two how many of them were sick and because I was confined in here at close range with this many people, would they get me sick, too?
The line kept moving a little faster. By now, it was 6:15 p.m. or thereabout. A man was talking to the couple behind me, saying how the people at this Wendy’s hated him because he always had problems with his order, and by golly he always let them know about it. He started bringing the food back when it was wrong, even if he had to drive all the way back from home to do it. The manager knew him and didn’t like him, he bragged.
I started to internally roll my eyes when he said he intended to stand there after he got his six hamburgers and check every one to make sure they were right. If they weren’t, line or no line, he’d make them give him new ones that were right.
Obviously, I didn’t think too highly of him at that point.
He got up to order shortly thereafter, and I saw why he always got his orders wrong.
First, he placed his order in a rambling, stammering start and stop fashion that was almost incoherent. I had no idea what he wanted on which hamburgers when he was done. Then, the clerk, who I think was the assistant manager, repeated the order back. No, that wasn’t right. The customer went through the whole thing again, contradicting what he said before and what the manager read back to him.
If I hadn’t been in a long line for almost a half-hour, the whole thing would have been funny.
So, they seemed to get everything straightened out, but I didn’t think they had agreed on the order so much as agreed to stop discussing it until the burgers came out.
So, it took a little while for his six hamburgers to come out. When they did, there was some confusion behind the counter as to what went where. I saw this as a bad sign.
They got everything straight and handed him the bag. As promised, he took them out of the bag one by one and laid them in two piles on top of the handrail.
By the end, five of them were right (Hooray! The over-under was four.) but one had the wrong combination of condiments.
He paused, and looked back to the counter for a long while. It was pregnant pause, because I think some of the folks in line would have been happy to give him a makeshift cesarean section right there in line if he followed through on his promise.
He turned to his friends in line and smiled and said, “Well, they got one wrong, like I knew they would. But, I won’t hold up the whole line to get it fixed.”
I think he just wanted someone to know the Clarksville Wendy’s had screwed him over again, but he was such a big, magnanimous person he would suffer so the line would keep moving.
Good choice.
Finally, I was up to order. It was about 6:20 p.m. I ordered for Hallie and me and moved back out of the way to wait for my food.
While I was waiting, a teenager who had been eating in the restaurant came up to the front of the line and asked for refills on his pop. Now, ordinarily, this would be no big deal. But it seemed to me that if he had any common courtesy he’d just shut up and eat his ice and get a damn drink when he got home. He looked kind of sheepish about it, like he realized at that moment he was about a popular as a nerd at a homecoming dance.
The Wendy’s staff handled it very well. They refilled his drinks quickly. When he left the line, the problem was solved and quickly forgotten.
I got my food and took what they gave me. It could have been a rat burger and deep fried cat litter and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
When I got back out to the car, it was 6:25 p.m. Thirty-five minutes in line at a Wendy’s. One the way to the car, I realized that Hallie had to play with Izzy in the car for 35 minutes while I was in line. I wondered if they both would be ready to kill when I got out there, but everyone was happy to have food. Hallie fed Izzy while I was waiting in line.
Then, we proceeded to spend the five days in the dark.
It was Friday afternoon that power came back on. All I can say is thank God for gas water heaters. For five days, showers were our best luxury.