The Kind-heartedness of Northern Lights

There are a lot of things that good people have done that I could tell you; but this one is not about a kind-hearted person, it was a wonderful gesture of help from a company.

 My power company, to be exact.  The year was 2001, if memory serves me right. 

I had been living in the little trailer on the property in Idaho with no heat or lights because I just didn't have the money necessary to hook up electricity out there. Summer was not too bad. I could go down to the river and bathe, but usually, I just stopped at the laundromat on the way home from work, washed/dried my laundry, and went into the bathroom and cleaned myself up. 

Winter was harder.   I tried to heat the trailer with a kerosene heater, and it barely touched the intense cold of those Idaho winters. I shivered under my blankets every night. 

One night, the heater sooted over, and smoked up the house while I was sleeping. I remember waking up to a faint peeping sound that I thought was my alarm, and I felt way too groggy to be getting up and going to work, but I was trying. 

As I came awake, the noise got louder, became a screeching wail, and I realized (horrified) that it was the smoke alarm and the house was black with smoke. I dragged the smouldering heater outside into the snow, and opened both doors to the trailer. 

I had been freezing before, now I was even colder; but I  realized how close I had come to being dead, and I was grateful to still be alive. 

I was 55, and didn't want to be a pioneer, and now, I was on the verge of giving up. 

 Northern Lights, our power company, called me and said they would run the power in for me, only charge me a fraction of the price it should have been, and let me make payments on that part. 

My dad had been one of the very first linemen for Northern Lights, and had worked there until he retired. They wanted to help me in honor and rememberance of my dad. 

You never saw anyone as grateful as I  was when they ran the line up to the old trailer, and put that power box in. 

This Picture is of my dad and I with the first Northern Lights linetruck. It was taken in Paradise Valley in about  1946.