A friend of mine related these incidents. Then she swore me to silence with regard to names, dates, and places. When I said, “Well, if you’d rather, I can always write about something else,” she responded, “But it’s such a neat story.”

She’s right. It is.

So, clothed in pseudonyms and wreathed behind an absolute shrubbery of obfuscation, this is the marvelous tale of a storm, a big truck, a lot of repair equipment, and …

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Once upon a time in a far off land, there occurred fierce and wicked weather. I won’t say where. I won’t say when. All you have to know is that it was violent. It destroyed homes. It shattered lives.

As in the aftermath of many storms, it also knocked out electricity.

Now I imagine that when you think of utility trucks, you envision anonymous workers wearing complicated leather belts filled with esoteric equipment who climb poles for the purpose of restoring power.

That’s what I used to think. Now, I don’t.

Instead. I see utility trucks as gigantic medieval horses. I see utility workers as Knights in Shining Armor. And I see storms as dragons to be slain.

Here’s how my friend Katie (phony name) slew hers.

Rain pelted. Wind roared. Trees shook in their shoes. Okay. I’m not very good at describing weather conditions, but it was bad out there. Electric poles were being knocked down. Electricity all over of the state was off line. And Katie was on call. For the first two days, she worked forty-eight hours, with only a four-hour break for sleep. During that period, she was sent downstate, where the weather had been more savage, and the devastation more complete.

Floods demolished houses. Wind tore down billboards. Trees slammed like giant fists onto trucks, buses, and cars. Utility poles toppled over and showered hot sparks of electricity into the street.

Katie’s crew consisted of five trucks. The vehicle that she drove was a digger with a pole trailer attached. The poles she carried replaced the ones that were knocked down by the storm.

Her crew – and hundreds of others from as far away as Florida and Canada – sallied forth in trucks and trailers like Knights on a quest. And like King Arthur’s knights, they were long gone from home and hearth, labored tirelessly, lived in crude conditions, foraged for food, and wandered from town to town.

Or, to quote Katie, “It got so bad, I forgot to put on my lipstick.”

We’re talking seriously hellish conditions here.

Except that we’re not. Not really. But the work was unrelenting, the conditions were primitive, and the routine was rigorous. Every morning the crews caravaned to wherever they were needed most. Sixteen hours later, they were transported back to an enormous airplane hangar where they would bed down for seven hours before beginning their next sixteen-hour shift. Folding beds inside that vast open area were laid out, row by row, like headstones in a cemetery. The thin blankets they were given provided little warmth, and the lines of Porta-potties outside seemed to go on forever. They showered in trailers (her first night out, there was no hot water), ate in a mess tent, and grabbed meals on the fly.