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Where Were You When the Lights Came On?
by Saara
Traditional Artist
18 years ago
Most of the readers of Ruralaite magazine must have been really getting on, if this article was addressed to them. As I recall, it was about the day that electricity was delivered for the first time in the author's childhood! Given that it was more than 15 years ago the piece was published, the author would have had to have written his rememberence of something that likely happened in the 1930's, so he must have been about 65 or 70 *then*. I tried to illustrate the family accordingly. And since electrity was central to the article, I made the lightbulb the central feature of the lllustration.
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PandaFox
~pandafox
I was dead! ^-^ Great pic!
Kathmandu
~kathmandu
Not necessarily, here in East Texas/ Arkansas some areas were not on the electrical grid until the late 60's and hand cranked phones were the norm up until the early 60's. There are guys I work with who are in their 40's who still remember when the lights came on so to speak.
Saara
∞saara
OP
I always knew there was something about Texas and the area generally around Texas that was slow catching up with the rest of country. When the U.S. moved into the 21st. century, Texas was still struggling to put the 19th. behind it.
Kathmandu
~kathmandu
Any area west of the Mississippi up to California was late being electrified simply because of huge distances and sparse populations. I would imagine places in Canada, especially small towns in Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territory, that didn't see electricity until the 70's or even later.
Saara
∞saara
OP
Probably. It isn't so much the distances, though, as low population densities. A mile of wire in a populated countryside might service 100,000 people, but in the Dakotas or Northern Manitoba, the same mile of wire, costing the same to string, might only service a couple of thousand customers. On top of that, in some extreme geography or climates, the cost of stringing that mile might actually be higher. I know tht parts of Northern Ontario were getting fully electrified as late as the 1950's. Still, that situation must have been somewhat unusual. (The muskeg and rocky ridges and granite Canadian shield were very tough to build over.)
asthexiancal
~asthexiancal
Ha ha... Your comment to your pic makes me on the contrary think about a sci-fi novel where, following a natural genetic disaster, humans just ceased having babies, and was slowly regressing to a rural state as the population aged. Towards the end, an old traveller stopped by a village where people welcomed him, and as the evening came, they decided to light on the very last working bulb with the last bits of electricity an abandoned factory near that village was still able to give... They were all watching it religiously, almost forgetting to take their supper, in a scene I imagined much like what you just uploaded.......
NeoPanTyger
~neopantyger
looks a bit like earthbound characters :D
