Hurricane lamps

and other memories

Recently I was walking across the living room and the lights went out. They went out silently, not with the click from the circuit breaker. I stood still and wondered if something dreadful had happened that I had somehow missed, since there was no thunderstorm in the area.

My companion finds my reaction to being suddenly plunged into a century without electricity amusing. He tells me I freeze. This must be what I look like from the outside. Internally is a very different matter.

I am not frozen. I have been transported to another place and time.

I am in Jamaica, at Carton our old family home, and the lights have just gone out. First we run to the veranda to look across at Winefield to see if they still have lights. They don’t. This means it is a local problem and we will just have to wait until the lights come back on again.

We run around trying to find the hurricane lamps that were stored away for use when there is an approaching storm. We pull them out from their hiding places, make sure they are adequately filled with kerosene, and place them strategically around the house for use when it is dark.

I used to love these times. Dusk falling quietly, the total silence because we could not use the record player or turn on the television, which would have covered the sound from the tree frogs whistling in the night. There was the soft light from the hurricane lamp that seemed to throw its warm glow around us, calming even the most tortured soul. At those times I could feel the cells relax in my body as we were taken back through the ages to a time without electricity.

So, this is what had happened as I stepped across the living room and the lights went out in the tiny town I live in Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy.

I had been transported to the living room at Carton and the soft light from our Home Sweet Home lamps, the sound of people having a quiet discussion as they went about their tasks in the light of the hurricane lamp in the kitchen. Yes, even sounds were muted.

Once, in Jamaica, after Ruth had a stroke, we were days without light, until I noticed the spotlights over at Winefield. This meant I had to wait until morning, go down to Liberty Hill at Lime Hall to our friend’s house and ask if I could use the telephone to call the electricity company. Once it was because I had forgotten to pay the bill. Another time the Jamaica Public Service company (JPS) had to send someone out to discover what the problem could be.

That time it was because lightening had struck the rotting electricity pole on the barbecue short meters from the house.

Men came to check on the pole and stated that it would have to be replaced. It would not cost us anything because the pole belonged to the JPS.

“Shouldn’t it be moved further away?” I asked.

The man turned to me and said, “I think it is in a very good position. It is better that the electricity pole gets struck by lightening and not the house.”

This pole was replaced, and with it light and power were restored.

Back in Italy, I went out to see if the neighbours had lights on. They did not. So it was a local problem. We both went to our smart phones to see if we could discover what the problem could be. Even the Internet was not working so it was not only a local problem. As there is so much going on in the world I wondered if, indeed, something dreadful had happened.

“We are isolated,” said my companion. He didn’t seem too worried. We are among those folks who enjoyed total lock down during Covid-19.

I felt he was savouring this moment of being totally cur off from news of world events. “If something has happened, we won’t know about it,” he added almost, to my mind, gleefully.

There was another time in Jamaica, when I was a teenager, a hurricane threatened to make landfall in Jamaica. My father, Stan, hurried around getting wood to cover the windows. I remember the clouds had turned purple. I wanted desperately to help my family prepare for the storm, but all I could do was sleep. Such a deep sleep.

That year the hurricane did not hit, but slipped around the edges in the direction of Port Antonio. A friend had come to visit in the middle of our preparations and told us the hurricane would not arrive. How did he know this, we wanted to know. He told us, “The leaves of the trumpet tree have not turned over.”

To this day I have looked at the leaves of trees before an approaching storm, and indeed they do turn over, but only because breeze blow! Not only that, here in Friuli Venezia Giulia, I have noticed that the leaves rustle before the rain. Usually, once hearing the leaves, and looking up at the mountains, I can gauge how long it will be before I get soaked.

Thunderstorms are intense in this area. It is for this reason, I believe, that everything gets shut down when a storm approaches. I was once out by the horses. I had just brought them in from a field into the paddock. I was still holding the lead ropes, and lightening struck the walnut tree the horses, and I, had been standing beside when I clipped the ropes to their halters.

I am fortunate my horses “spook in place”. Every muscle in their bodies tensed, they lifted their heads and looked at me. Was the human scared? The human was frozen to the ground. I did not gallop away in panic. This was enough for my horses to take their cue from me and stand still as stones until I moved. Lightening had struck, we had survived this time, we took a breath. I slipped their head collars off, and let them go.

I had seen a documentary about horses, in Mongolia I think, the narrator said the herd would seek shelter under trees when it rained, but stood out in the open during thunderstorms. Is this always true? I don’t know.

Years ago, when I was a child, I was out with the cattlemen. The headman and I were on horses. There was a storm, and the headman said we should go under the tree in the pasture to shelter from the rain. In what seemed like moments, my parents were there to save me. This is the day I got the lecture about never going under a tall tree in a thunderstorm. They were very cross with me because they knew they had already warned me about lightning and trees. I explained that, as I was a child, I didn’t think it was my place to be telling people who were older than me what to do. I was told that this was no excuse, and when people’s lives may be in danger it is best to speak out loudly, however young, or inferior you may feel yourself to be. I think the men were given the same lecture once they returned to home base.

The most wonderful sound is rain on the roof. Even better is rain on a zinc roof. Loud and intense the sound surrounds and lulls. Thunderstorms are thrilling if you are inside listening from the safety of the walls, and a roof over your head. Others, I am painfully aware, are not as fortunate.

Thinking about electric light, and the sudden shutting down of the supply of electricity brings me to thinking about solar panels, and how our tiny town could benefit from power from the sun. In 2024 Italy curbed the use of placing ground based solar panels on agricultural land (Link below to the Ente Nazionale per l'Energia Elettrica or Enel, the Italian National Electricity Board webpage, which describes the use of agrivoltaics in Italy). In some countries solar panels are placed on agricultural land, but are thigh enough off the ground that a tractor can pass underneath, or easily in between the planted rows.

I’ve known for years that world weather patterns have been changing. I was a child in Jamaica, when the goddess was a mere babe, and Aunt Mollie complained she could no longer count on the October to February rains to time her visit to Jamaica. Everything was topsy turvy. I remember, one year we had no rain at all for months, and perfectly formed cattle would drop dead from lack of water. We used to cut down the branches from the hog plum trees so the cattle would have something to eat. Our ponds dried up.

At the time our water came from the sky. When we moved from England, Stan had a large round tank constructed on the hill, above it was a broad bed of cement to catch any drops that fell. We lived well with that rain water. There was another tank close to the house where tiki tiki fish swam and ate the mosquito larva. Every so often fish would come out of the taps, and I would catch them and put them back in the tank.

Then, someone found water up near Claremont, and out neighbour let us run a pipe across his land to ours. The only thing is that it was over the ground, and every so often, a cow would step on the metal pipe and break it, and we would be without water.

I was visiting one year and there was an absence of water. I remarked to my sister it was a shame we did not have running water.

“What are you saying?” She exclaimed. “Of course we have running water! We just have to run and get it.”

Memories of that time, with rain from the tank. We would have to boil our water, and keep it in the fridge. It had an odd flavour. I think rainwater tastes fine, but I think the taste changes when the flavour is affected by whatever is being stored in the fridge.

We would look across the road, and see a greener strip of land where we were certain an underground river ran. Mist rose in that valley every morning following, I was certain, a hidden water course. Why we never sought water over there, I don’t know, but I do: Lack of money to fund the work. Funds were probably spent on sending my brother and me to boarding school in England. My parents would have done better to have kept us at home, taught us to run a cattle farm as a team, and spent the money on digging for water.

Friends would come and visit us from England, and my father would put a brick in the cistern of the toilet. Rightly, he wanted to reduce the amount of water used with every flush. I watched once in horror as an Italian friend from northern Italy would let the water run while helping me in the kitchen. Only when I moved to northern Italy did I understand. It is a land of rain, storms, snow, ice, and frequent flooding.

Water is free.

I think that it should not be.

I think we should pay for the water we use. My companion, from northern Italy, does not agree. Water should be free.

But I say: Who will pay for the infrastructure?

Taxes. No.

I believe we should pay for the amount of water we use. When I lived around Lake Bracciano we paid for water. There was a price for domestic use, and a lower price for agricultural use, including water for livestock.

However, here we are now in Italy, back in the tiny town in northeastern Italy, I am walking across a room, and the lights go out. I freeze and am transported to another time and place.

Thank you for reading.

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Link to Enel website on agrivoltaics in Italy: https://www.enel.com/learning-hub/renewables/agrivoltaics/italy (Si apre in una nuova finestra)