2:17 AM - a fictional account

*This blog is made from completely recycled words. It was originally published 12/2/2006*

Up from the depths of a complete exhausted sleep, my consciousness surfaces when, for the first time in months - there is an absence of pain throbbing in my left leg.

The absence brought a pleased smile to my face, as my consciousness crested the sleep world and brought me to a drugged-like state of being awake. The neon red digital clock reads 2:17 AM in the otherwise blank darkness. My smile turns swiftly into panic when I realize the absence of pain... is caused by the complete lack of any feeling whatsoever in my legs. I struggle to sit upright in bed, the thoughts of drifting off and returning to sleep vanishing with unbelievable swiftness. I curse living alone at such a time as this.

The lateness, or rather the earliness of the hour, 2:17 AM, burning, searing into my head, as I stand stiffly, uncertainly on legs pretending to be wood. I carefully take the two steps to the dresser that holds the telephone and frantically search the darkness with my hands for it. My hand finds the phone just as I stumble and fall, like a novice on tall circus clown stilts... heavily to the floor. I quickly turn to a seating position when OUCH! I see those stars they talk about as the phone falls onto my head after teetering on the edge of the dresser after I had blindly pushed it there.

I fleetingly think, "Well, at least I won't have to try to stand to get to the phone, its down here on the floor with me," as I find it after a couple sweeps in the dark with my right hand. I find the handset and listen to ... the lack of dial tone. The fall from the dresser had pulled the cord from the wall. I look at the clock while I ponder what to do, 2:18 AM.

My efforts to stand, pulling myself upright along the dresser fail as my legs refuse to cooperate. I resolve to crawl the length of the house to the living room where another phone sits on a low table, the only one low enough for me to reach. I turn to the clock and the taunting red neon burns in the dark, 2:19 AM. There is no moonlight tonight, the heavy curtains pulled closed in any event to ward off the years first frosty windy night. I grope along the floor crawling slowly toward the clock and the door next to it when I hear a poof like thud. The clock disappears and blackness falls. The power has failed.

I crawl slowly toward where I remember the doorway to be, reaching out to ward off an unexpected collision with the wall, doorframe, or table leg under the clock. I get to hallway were a slight draft chills my skin, in my haste, I had left my night robe draped on the end of the bed. I ponder returning for it only a moment and press on for the telephone as the chill seems to be causing the total numbness in my legs to drift upwards to my waist.

I know the hall runs the length of my house, it could not be more than 50-60 feet long but it takes what seems like hours to work my way down to the far end. Panting from exertion, and from fear, my left hand finds the doorframe denoting the entryway to the kitchen; the phone is toward my right a bit. I crawl forward, knowing the phone is ten, nine, eight feet away when I hear another thudding noise as the power comes back on. A dull light shines in the living room, this one a pale green, as the VCR clock blinks 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM repeatedly ever so mindlessly.

My eyes can see faint shapes in the gloom, but without my glasses on, nothing takes on solidness, and the vague forms do not help me with finding the phone. I know it is about 12 feet.... over in that direction from the eternally blinking 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM... I finally get to the phone and ...realize the only phone number I remember is Nine-Eleven. I sit in nearly complete darkness in despair as the cold and the numbness overtake my arms and fingers, the eternally blinking 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM stabs at me, I cannot phone for help... as my phone does not have an "11" on the dial.

The Roaring Bull (The 5th)

Nestled among Pennsylvania's beautiful mountains lies the historic town of Millersburg - home of a unique transportation service whose very beginnings are lost in antiquity. Here, across the mile wide Susquehanna River, one can ride the last ferry on the river and experience a part of transportation history.

The Millersburg Ferry Boat is the oldest transportation system in Pennsylvania. It crosses the Susquehanna River from Millersburg in Dauphin County to an adjacent landing along U.S. Routes 11 and 15 in Perry County, approximately 25 miles north of the state capital of Harrisburg.


The ramp at Millersburg includes a sign that states the first poled ferry at this location started in 1825. A powered paddlewheel ferry began freight and passenger operations in 1873. The ferry acted as an unofficial extension of the railroad and canal on the east shore.


If you get there and want to take the ferry, you swing this door out to signal the boat waiting on the other side of the river. The auto deck has capacity for four cars. The ferry claims a capacity of 50 people. Its absolute top speed is 4 miles an hour.


The pedigree of these boats go back to the Susquehanna coal dredges (enough coal was washed into the river from coal cleaning operations on some tributaries to make recovery of the fine coal sludge profitable), and even before that, to the ferry operations at Peach Bottom operated by the Peach Bottom Railroad. Peach Bottom is now the site of a nuclear power plant.

Source of Pictures and Info

More historical information can be found here

Weekend Wordle

It's that time of week again!

It's time for Shan's Weekend Wordles.

Here's what you do:

1) Go to Wordle.net to create your Wordle.

2) Post it on your blog with a link to Shan's Week~End Wordles or Last Shreds Of Sanity.

3) Once that's done, go back to Last Shreds Of Sanity and sign the Mr Linky that she'll have up - this will help direct those who play along to your blog.

Oddly Thought Provoking

I saw this scene while walking around the neighborhood a couple days ago.



I'm not exactly sure what the power lawn maintenance machine is, I think its a sidewalk edger but am not sure, it might be a cement saw. In any event, this homeowner pulled his Christmas ornaments in from the lawn, but obvious got tired from this unplanned strenuous exercise, and has not put them away yet, on this first day of May.

In some odd way though, the placement is fitting - it reflects on the American Way and its obsession with gas-powered labor saving devices of every possible conceivable use. Part of the reason our economy is the way it is today is due to the fact so many Americans wouldn't dream of picking up a shovel or pushing a reel mower.

I'm questioning why we "need" to have gas-powered lawn mowers, trimmers, leaf blowers, mulchers, shredders, snow blowers, and rototillers for properties barely big enough to store them all on. The annual mindless Spring search for the "perfect" lawn is officially underway when the Saturday morning stillness is shattered by the racket of a labor-saving device.

Its hard to imagine the days past in this country when thousands of miles of highways and mile after mile of railroad tracks were graded and laid with nothing more than thousands of laborers with a shovel, a pick axe, a wheelbarrow, and perhaps a mule and wagon. Throw in the uncounted buildings and bridges built before the mid-1800's that stand today - proud and tall - and showing little evidence of disrepair and perhaps you too find it amazing how our "ancestors" did it by "hand".

They sure don't build things like they used to - I don't even think we could anymore. If it doesn't unlock and start with a keyless remote - it must be broken.