Lights out – yikes, must be terrorism!

The lights had been flickering all that evening, and eventually, around 9 p.m., right after Homeland Insecurity terror alerts ratchet up to orange again, my whole house’s electricity goes out.

Uh-oh, they’ve truck-bombed the Liberty Bell?

All around me the second-floor den is dark, except for the muted glow of my laptop. I quickly sign off, to conserve my battery, and descend the staircase by touch in search of flashlight and candles.

Inevitably, my first assumption is terrorists.

My paranoia next turns toward whether this is part of some unannounced national disaster/crisis experiment by the feds to test our responses without telling us we’re involved as participants.

Thank you, Uncle.

When I call the electric company’s emergency hotline to report my “power outage,” their response system is totally automated, not a human being anywhere. So I then call 911 to see what the police know. Only that nothing extraordinary has happened in the city.

Several of my neighbors converge outside. Their lights have gone off, too. So I know it’s not some massive fuse failure in my basement. I hate those. One neighbor says she’d gotten a notice in the mail from the electric company apologizing for recent power outages, but she threw it away.

Oh, that must be something I thought was a bill and didn’t open yet.

How peculiar, the electric company apologizing to residents for power outages that hadn’t happened yet? Which makes me feel even more like we’re part of some hitherto unrevealed national-defense plot.

Inside, I rifle through my unpaid bills for the letter from the electric company. At the bottom, I find a man’s name and number. Maybe he knows something, but he’s not there when I call. I leave a calmly analytical message on his voice mail: During times of high terror alert, it’s not exactly consumer-friendly to have emergency calls answered by machines.

Already, I’ve committed the electric company’s emergency hotline number to memory, so I re-dial it for an update. A pleasant female voice tells me “603 people” are without power; they don’t know what caused it, and they don’t know when it will be fixed.

Gross.

By now it’s close to midnight. The candles are flickering in a picturesque tableau. All that’s missing are the Balinese shadow-puppets and some sherry. Lacking both, I go to sleep. It’s midnight.

I’m not exactly tired, but few things are suited entirely to the dark. Not reading, not writing. Not eating, because if I open the refrigerator too many times, the food will spoil. The gas stove’s pilot light is electric. Some of the phones don’t work. Listening to music might be restorative, but that takes electricity.

After making a note to upgrade my survival gear and purchase a sun-powered radio, I vow to flee the emotionally constipated East Coast and build a solar-powered residence so I’ll never have to suffer this ignominy again.

Meantime, I crawl under my tropical palm-frond comforter and zonk out until the next morning, when the telephone awakes me at quarter of 9. I’m dreaming: While visiting my artist friend Marlene in Chicago, suddenly the police call, ordering us to “evacuate the mountain, Weapons of Mass Destruction imminent. Those who refuse to leave will become fugitives.”

Half asleep, my dream interrupted, I pick up the telephone and it’s the electric company engineering guy. He shares my concern about the lack of human presence in their emergency response system.

Some public utility!

After commiserating about my plight – more than 12 hours without power – he advises me to file a claim for my damaged computers and printers, my spoiled food – “don’t forget,” he says pointedly, “all the lobsters and steaks for that dinner party you were planning to give” – and my temporary loss of livelihood.

Apparently, the power outage is caused by a frayed trunk line– decaying infrastructure typical of most large American cities. They’ll have to replace 175 feet of underground cable, no telling when.

I cringe at the possibility of three more days roughing it, throw up my hands, and hit the corner store for provisions: more candles, some lime nacho chips for nocturnal munchies and, as a special disaster treat, hot peach cobbler for breakfast.

Then by phone I check in with my computer dude in Wilmington, seeking his input. Does he think my two laptops will be dead when the power returns? Apropos of blackouts, he sagely declares, “In the ’50s, we never lost power. Something’s not right.”

Finally, I find my lamp oil, stored way back under the kitchen sink. While I’m cleaning the lamp’s grimy glass chimney, it explodes in my hands, and – in slow motion – a shard of glass lacerates my left thumb and blood begins to spurt. I apply a tourniquet and curse my fate.

Around 4 the following afternoon, suddenly the lights go back on, with little fanfare. I am yakking long-distance with a friend who recently moved to the Catskills. “Oh, our power always goes off,” chuckles the intrepid third-world traveler.

I realize if I lived in California, where I want to move, “rolling power blackouts” are a way of life, so I’d better get used to it.

Although the terror alert has been lowered to yellow, I have never received my claim form.

Saddam or no Saddam, I think how the people must still be waiting to get their electricity back in Baghdad – another unfortunate consequence of a war that, perhaps, need never have been fought.

For some things, there can never be sufficient compensation.