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# A Night of No TV
- URL: https://tombeaverbooks.ghost.io/a-night-of-no-tv/
- Published: 2026-10-06T01:12:40.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T03:48:01.000Z
- Author: Tom Beaver
- Tags: Book: Movies And TV, #Import 2026-10-09 17:51

> GUESTREADABLE: xxx  
> RSTATUS: xxx  
> ESTATUS: xxx  
> CHAPSECTIONNAME: xxx  
> CHAPORDER: xxx  
> ITEMCHAPNAME: *Years 2005-09*  
> ITEMORDER: *xxx*  
> ITEMTYPE: xxx  
> ITEMSOURCE: MoviesAndTV\_v3f.vellum  
> ITEMNOTE: xxx  
> ITEMINTRO: *x*xx

*STORYSUBTITLE: Dec. 1, 2006*

A power outage Friday night. Was watching TV and the image began freezing a lot. I shut down and unplugged the computer. Storm was coming on. Some lightning and thunder. Then raine started pattering on the glass pretty hard, a wind whipped up, the long curtains came stretching into the living room. A hard fresh wind. I realized water was entering—almost a wave of it, a puddle already formed in the window sill, my nearby record album covers sponging it up. Shut the windows. About a minute later the power died. All this commotion in about two minutes, except for the shutting down computer, which had been about 10 minutes before. 

Searched house in the dark for matches, candles, flashlight. Kept waiting for lightning to illuminate the room, hoping that in that instant of visibility my eyes might land on something useful. Sure enough, when a lightning flash came, the 6-volt flashlight was sitting directly in my line of sight! Then was able to find candles and matches.

Went outside with light to see what’s up. Chad coming out pulling his coat on as he walked. He thought perhaps the tree in the north yard had finally fallen, possibly taking wires down with it. We aimed our flashlights at its approximate place in the dark, standing in the whipping wind and mist just in front of the house, above the long slope we couldn’t see, like two sailors in a dark sea. My flashlight was better—he asked could he borrow it. He took my short but powerful flashlight, I took his long flashlight from under his half-arm (right arm) and he went striding down into the ocean—I mean the sloping yard. “If you see me wiggling around and twitching, call an ambulance.” He got down there and determined no wires were down. A falsh of lightning showed both of us—him from the yard, me from the porch—that the old skyscraper of a tree was now a long black log on the ground. 

Later I took a walk down the driveway, around a mass of fallen, wrecked timber near the dumpster. an incredible mess and quantity. Down to the mailboxes, then out Miller Road the “back way” to 9G, then up towards that little convenience store, it was unlit, shut down. Had wanted to hear some kind of news from the locals. Recorded my thoughts on audio as I walked. Came home, read in bed by flashlight: *Lady in the Lake*, the third or fourth reading. Think I got the Dashiell Hammett novels right after arriving in New York, but certainly acquired them after college. 

Enjoyed the powerless evening. At one point I was lying on couch, feeling time passing very slowly, TV and computer conspicuously unavailable and a kind of gnawing desire for them, but also enjoying the forced quiet. The apartment remarkably still and dark. No TV, no little red lights here and there from the gadgets, no printer hum, no computer hum, no refrigerator rumble. I could see the sky through one of the tall windows and watched an airplane’s red light cut across one corner of my view. Thoughts simultaneously here and in childhood, as they almost always are. Then this idea: one of the missing wonders of childhood is that back then I was always looking forward and outward, not backward. And I could do that now, if I tried. I could just stop longing for the past. If I did that for, say, a month, like an extended version of this evening without technology, would I get back the old wonder and desire, my old interest in the future and the wide world? And then I did get those old feelings back, right as I was wishing for them. They popped into me briefly, like a half-minute epiphany. I was watching that slow airplane light in the night sky in the quiet night and suddenly felt the awe I lived with, and lived for, as a boy and teenager. The scary thrill of moving toward my place in the historic adventure of earth. 

As I was walking down my driveway in the dark later, I thought, “That moment has changed me.” *\~ Dec. 1, 2006*