It was 9 degrees in Battle Creek on Christmas Eve and my parents’ farm house had been without power for three days. We were making do with a fireplace and a small generator to pump water. At four in the afternoon, I noticed that a car had pulled to the side of the road along side a bean field my father owns and I drove my truck down to see if everything was alright. In the car was a young man from Consumers Power who was out “spotting” downed power lines. He had found two in that bean field and was required by protocol to stay near them to “guard” them even though they had been down for several days.

Three hours later he was still there sitting in his car alone on that desolate and icy road. Christmas Eve was in full swing at my parents’ house and the oil lamps and candles actually added something that we had not expected. I returned to the man’s car with hot coffee and cake. He told me that he had a wife and two small children at home in Grand Rapids and was waiting for a truck with a crew from Illinois to show up to work on the downed wires. After six hours he was still there and still no sign of the truck when I brought him a plate from our Christmas Eve dinner and we began to chat on the side of the road continuing our conversation about his family and his job.

He is a typical Michigander who has seen more than his fair share of downsizing, lay-offs, economic decay and other calamities heaped upon him by a global economy that is utterly indifferent to the well being of the Pleasant Peninsula or the people who live there. Ordinarily, he was a meter reader, but told me that his job was being done away with because of “smart meters”, that, by the way, do not sound all that smart to me.

I told him that there were worse ways a man could spend his Christmas Eve and that putting himself in the service of others was perhaps the best way to honor the one whose day was to follow. I told him that we had been without power for three days and that my entire family was grateful to him and the other members of the emergency crews that were working through the Christmas holiday to restore power to over 400,000 households across the state. When I came back to check on him just before midnight, a utility truck had finally arrived and a tall young man was suiting up to climb into the cherry picker. He was cheerful, though his sixteen hour shift was starting to wear on him. He told me that he was happy to be working, happy to be helpful and had had enough Mountain Dew to keep him up for days. I stood there in the snow and watched these men work. The young fellow I had first met walked over to hand me the thermos that I had brought him hours earlier in the evening. He thanked me for my concern and said “God bless you”. I smiled at him and said, “he already has”. By the time I returned to the house, the lights were on and all was well, at least on Walnut Hill Farm.