Well! Friday certainly tried very hard to live up to it's reputation.
Two days ago it was January, Friday the 13th. Went to work as usual, but the day went decidedly strange once I'd gotten there... maybe the full moon the night before gave the day an extra 'whammy'.
I found out that the Little Fort store apparently has several power lines giving it power. (Presumably because of all the fridges, coolers and freezers, plus all the other electrical gizmos like the tills and the coffee makers and such.)
Well, somewhere in the North Thompson Valley, not entirely sure what happened, but one of the lines lost power. Possibly a tree down over the line or something similar (haven't heard yet for sure what caused it)....
In the store, the back half of the store - the lights went out. We checked the breakers - nope, they were fine. Along one wall was a F'Real machine (makes milk shakes), a pop machine, two coffee brewing stations, a microwave, and a cappachino machine. The only thing working was the cappachino, which sits smack in the middle of the lot. Go figure!
Up by the tills, the lottery machine and the computer were down, but the tills were fine. Along the 3rd wall were two freezers and one cooler. They were fine. In the middle of the room was the coffee stand which had one item plugged in - the Keurig machine.... it was off. The gas pumps, luckily, were still on.
The water for the building (including the washrooms) runs on pumps from a well. The ladies washroom had no power, but the men's did. (The wiring in this place must be really interesting!)
Then, about 20-30 minutes after the initial loss of power, the rest of the power went off... at this point, likely because the Hydro crews had found the issue and cut off the power so that they could safely fix the issue. It was reported to us that they expected it to be off for 2 hours. Outside we went to the pumps to put ribbon around blocking them off so customers driving up would see something was going on. Also put a note on the door and locked the door.
Then we started to move some of the more sensitive stuff to the big walk in freezer... and had just finished doing this, when, and hour earlier than expected, the power came back on... so back went the stuff, and back outside to remove the ribbon from the pumps and the note from the door.
Wheeeeeee! What fun!
Sure made for an interesting day!
😀
On my mom's side, as noted previously, her parents never married. Initially raised by her dad's side of the family, here is a photo of the house where se grew up. Mom considered her grandmother as her mother for the longest time.
Ruth's dad was Konrad Ihle, born in Germany on Sep 5th 1897. The next photo is of Konrad and his wife Helene Staudt (mom's step-mom, whom she really liked) and was taken in the 1980's.
Konrad and Helene had 5 daughters, mom's half-sisters: Lieselotte, Margarete, Martha, Margot and Isolde. Margarete is the only one I've managed to sort of keep in contact with... at least, I send her Christmas cards each year and sometime (though infrequently) she writes back.
Helene died in 1981 and Konrad died on Aug 21st 1984.
Konrad's family coincidentally also owned a bicycle shop, the same as the Houben's.
Auguste Tepper, my grandmother, didn't meet mom after she was born, until mom's 15th birthday. Mom remembered the day very well.
She got out of a school assembly to listen to Hitler to go to meet her mom at the train station. Auguste was very nervous to meet her daughter, too, and while waiting for the train to arrive at the station she apparently shredded her train ticket! The conductor (or whoever it is who collects the tickets on the train), very kindly issued her a replacement when he heard why she was travelling on the train and why she had shredded the ticket.
Auguste had a bad limp, a congenetal defect in the hip in her left leg... I inherited the same defective gene, but have it in my right hip. (Hence the limp if you've seen me walking.)
