Upstate New York |
BROOKFIELD
When the power goes out, it can be hard to find something to do. You can’t watch TV. You shouldn’t open the refrigerator or freezer because food might spoil. You might not even be able to use your stove. More than 86,000 people were reminded of that as recently as July 8, when they were left in the dark after tornadoes and violent winds and rain ripped through Upstate New York. Hobie and Lois Morris, however, were not among them. Situated in a tall, larch wood A-frame home 10 minutes outside the heart of Brookfield, the Morrises have been living without electricity since 1980. “All the things that you basically need electricity for, we’ve replaced by doing other things,” Hobie explained. Around the world, almost 1.4 billion people — nearly a billion of whom live in Africa or India — don’t have electricity. Most of them don’t have a choice. The Morrises’ lifestyle, however, is a preference. Inside their tent-like, cozy home, kerosene lamps reveal heating and cooking wood stoves imported from Norway. Items more often seen in museums — such as a shoulder yoke water bucket carrier Hobie made from scrap wood — line the slanted walls. There’s a sink, but no running water: Hobie bails buckets from a spring down the road. When nature calls, they use an outhouse. And, while summer bucket baths often occur outside, once it’s cold, they happen right next to that sink. “You develop different ways of doing things,” Hobie said. When their clothes are wrinkled, Lois heats a solid-metal sad iron on the stove, doing a “spit test” to know when it’s ready to go. If the rug in the upstairs loft gets dirty, she pitches it out the window, hanging it on a two-by-four and thumping it clean with a rug beater. A 30-gallon can in the ground acts as the Morrises’ refrigerator, often keeping potatoes, carrots, beets and other food fresh through the winter. Everything else — the tomato juice, apple sauce, jellies and jams — is stored in cans on shelves inside the home. “I can’t think of anything where we’d need electricity,” Lois said. “I don’t really miss it.” They often spend mornings and evenings in town, but afternoons are spent maintaining the home: Hobie chops wood and push mows the lawn while Lois cares for the garden, full of various vegetables sitting in 30 years’ worth of compost. Lois, 76, and Hobie, 75, get by on $8,000 a year, which comes mostly from Social Security and a pension. Read more at http://www.uticaod.com/article/20140809/NEWS/140809557.
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ABOUTPieces that were published during the eight months I spent covering Herkimer County and other topics in upstate New York. Archives
February 2015
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