Sparked by House of Gadgets, Responses Cover Circuit
My notes on the electrification of our house have provoked responses ranging from commendation to outrage.
First, I ought to mention that Charlotte Leslau questioned my failure to list one common article among our many electrical devices. “You probably have electric blankets,” she said. “True?”
True. We have four. They’re so quiet I’d forgotten them.
I also believe I forgot our clocks. We have 10--six plug-in, four battery-powered, and I have not feeling I’ve forgotten one or two.
The outrage was expressed by Carl Ranke of Azusa. “I must be a glutton for punishment,” he says. “I read your column every morning and there aren’t ever less than two a week that fail to outrage me!”
(Something bothers me about that sentence. Does he mean that no fewer than two of my columns every week fail to outrage him? I guess we must assume, then, that the other three do outrage him.)
“Can your environmental awareness actually be that lacking? Your passive attitude toward your wife’s obsession for electronic gadgets is utterly appalling.
“Unfortunately, the only feeling you express about it is your gratitude toward Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell for providing the fix that would eventually satisfy your wife’s demented addiction to electronic fulfillment. For God’s sake, get this woman to a psychiatrist!”
I am grateful to Ranke for letting me know that I might have given the impression that our dependency on electricity was my wife’s affliction alone. Horrors! I am mistakenly accused of maligning her often enough.
She does have a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner and an electric iron that I think of being hers exclusively, but I believe we share equally the responsibility for all the others, including the microwave, which I use to prepare my lunches and to heat up coffee.
At the other end of the spectrum I have this letter from Howard P. Allen, chairman of the executive committee of the Southern California Edison Co.:
“I thoroughly enjoyed your column ‘An Eclectic Lifestyle . . . Through the Magic of Electricity.’ It was exceedingly well done, and we who work in the trenches providing it for 10 million people appreciate the kind comments. . . .”
Mr. Allen evidently doesn’t seem to feel that we are wasting electricity, but that we are using it in a gratifying way. He doesn’t seem to suggest that electric power is running out.
We have indeed experienced power failures: one a few years ago for more than 24 hours. It was like being plunged into the dark ages. But I believe that was caused by a storm, and did not reflect any real lack of power.
There are times when the supply must run dangerously low. Imagine how much power is being used in Southern California in the evening when all the lights are on, the television is blasting out the war news, the kids are listening to rock in their bedrooms, and the microwave is cooking dinner.
Actually, my wife and I are conservative power users compared with some families. Dave Kaufman writes that in the 1950s he read that the average American home contained eight electric motors; he counted 15 in his own. Early this year, he says, he made a second count--40 years later--and found that the number had increased to 50.
And I’ll bet Kaufman doesn’t even have a pair of electrified slippers, as we do.
“Your column was useful in that it reminded people how dependent we are on electricity and what a boon it is to all of us,” writes Ed Lowell of Tarzana. “I remember clothes being washed by hand. But do also remind us how much less it costs now compared to the days of our youth. In constant dollars it probably costs 1/20th of what it did then.”
Lowell reminds us that when Thomas Edison opened the Pearl Street Station, he said, “We are going to make electricity so cheap that only the rich will be able to afford candles.”
Lois Koch suggests that in case of a power failure my wife and I might need a generator to go on living. I have thought of getting a gasoline pump to pump water from our pool in case of fire. Victor P. Garwood suggests that we can get an all-purpose generator for about $1,400. But I don’t like the sound and smell of a gasoline generator, and I don’t want to store gasoline in my garage.
I’m afraid we’re just going to have to trust to the Department of Water & Power and the Southern California Edison Co. to keep us running.
Now my wife says she’d like to have clocks in the new breakfast room and the new dining room.
If my calculations are correct, those will put us only one short of Thurber’s 13 clocks.
By the way, for any who have the notion that I don’t do my share of work around the house, let me note that it’s my job to see that the clocks are on time.
