Yesterday, at one of the few restaurants opened (doing a booming business because of it), this family's other kids brought up the subject of age.  These kids are 14 and 18.  I don't know what possessed them to think this, but they were shocked when they found out my real age.  Oh?  You must think I'm older than what I appear.  Well how old are you? 59.  What?!!!  They pointed at their dad and said "we thought you were his age!".  

Dad just turned 40 this week.  Now I was the one in shock. You think I"m in my 40's?!!  I haven't heard that in a long time, lol.  They just sat there staring at me. Umm, you know I have wrinkles on my face, right? Your dad doesn't have any....didn't phase them. 

Anyway, James just went out looking for gas.  Most stations are closed, some are just plain out of fuel - which literally and still makes no sense. I know how gas operations are run from the trucking side.  The stations set up accounts and then the trucks come and babysit the tanks. They don't necessarily fill a tank all the way up if there are other customers needing fuel as well.  But still, to just run out of gas and have nothing coming?  One of the stations has their own fuel trucks. Sitting there.  

Whatever the case, the few stations opened have lines that would make a Venezuela gas waiting line look like  a picnic in the park.  I can't imagine waiting that long to get gas, I'd rather just drive out of town and go 30 miles than wait an hour in a line, wasting gas sitting there idling.  These vehicles are out onto major streets on the shoulder, the lines are that long.  

So, that's exactly what we're doing, going to Longview for more gas after Taylor is done with her appointments over there.  We've got 2 5 gallon cans but I have another one at the property. Might as well fill them all up, we have no idea when the power is coming back on. SWEPCO is saying the end of next week, "but it could be much sooner than that". That doesn't tell us anything, really and we are going to operate off the assumption that we will be needing gas for the next several days.

If we don't, we'll have plenty for the lawnmowers and other gas operated devices.  My riding mower uses some fuel. 

We will probably eat out while over there.  

The grumpy people left about 30 minutes ago. The man was reassigned to some place on a Gulf port somewhere.  She lamented that they were leaving one place without electricity and moving to a place just in time for hurricane season. Sounds about right.  Their grumpiness sort of took a hike in the last week or so.  I dunno why, maybe because they knew they were leaving.  I've got 5 spots open? I think.  That's not good. I didn't hear back from the people allegedly coming in today - I sent them an email detailing the fact there is no power and don't expect any and yes, you can get a full refund. They didn't leave a phone number on their reservation so I can't call them and let them know.  

Shrugs shoulders. I did what I could.  Everyone that called yesterday knew the power is out everywhere, but they were calling me just in case. I"m on the other side of town, maybe it's on over there! Nope.  I wish it was! I wouldn't price gouge anyone, I wouldn't even raise my rates, but I'd make a killing right now off of overnight guests and having the park full.  Anyway, hoping these people understand there is no power.  If they do show up, I will probably give them a partial refund.  Maybe 15 for an overnight stay without power instead of my normal rate.  

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We drove clean to Carthage again to get gas.  This time everyone went and we had lunch/dinner at Denny's  Carthage didn't get his like Marshall, everything is normal down there excepting the sweltering heat. It was even worse than Marshall with a heat index of 116 degrees while we were there.

Stopped by the property before going so we could grab my other 5 gallon gas can. Someone had taken it out of the shed!  The first people I saw I asked, did you by chance happen to see anyone with my gas can? "We have it in the back of our truck, we filled up our generator and then we filled it up again to give back to you".  Half the park has generators out there now, thankfully. The bad part is finding gas anywhere.  There are a few places in town but the waits can be hours.  The lines are that long.  

We drove all over the place and the amount of damage was astounding. Houses with roofs torn open, huge trees down everywhere - many had fallen on the power lines and had snapped the telephone poles.  I mean, a LOT of them.  Even more than I saw yesterday.  

I was thankful those people had refilled the gas can. We drove back home, dumped the fuel into the generators and then headed to Carthage for more fuel.  I mean, you have your choice: wait in line for fuel here and hope they have some by the time you get to the pump or just drive 30 miles, fill up, drive back.  We have enough fuel to last until tomorrow now.  I am thinking it best to get up early, refill the generators and get to the gas station here before the lines and eliminate the need to drive 60 plus miles round trip.  Taylor said someone had told her that people were lining up at 5 am for fuel, tho.  

Another tenant called a few minutes ago. He brought a generator but he doesn't have a gas can and he can't find one anywhere. Do you have one I can borrow?  I thought a bit, we can't just let our cans go, we can't find any cans either.  I was about to say, well, you can borrow it long enough to get fuel and dump it into your generator when I remembered the diesel fuel can sitting out by one of the huge burn piles.  I had hid it a while back out there, people are stealing my gas cans, I've had 4 of them stolen since I started this rv park endeavor.  I had it out there to start fires on the piles.  I left it out there but the lid/nozzle is tightly sealed on it.

That was my offer. Go find that, clean it out and walaah. You have a 5 gallon gas can.  Well, do you have any idea what I could use to clean it out? I mean, the answer was obvious? Put some gas in it, swirl it around, dump out the gas, maybe do it again?  Ohh, yeahh! I got you!  Gasoline will clean that sucker right out, you just have to dump it somewhere where you won't get into trouble doing so.  He had been all over town looking for a can.

Unfortunately, SWEPCO has not changed their outlook on a date to have power restored.  We're looking at up to 6 more days of this.  People are getting their power back on randomly all around us. It's still baffling to me how one house can have power and the house across the street not have power.  I don't fully understand the power grid, obviously, just weird how it works.  

Our neighbors are finally jumping on the generator bandwagon. We've had them out there since the morning after the middle-of-the-night weather chaos.  So, those generators have been running about 37 hours now.  Probably be good to check the oil on them, lol.  I've had mine for several years but I haven't used it that much, mostly just a back up for times like this. I did use it to help build that bridge last summer, I wouldn't have been able to do that job without a generator.

I guess I'm just rambling on, it's just everyone is a bit on edge right now. The power outage is getting on people's nerves and they are starting to cast blame on the power companies - who had zero control over the catastrophic weather event. I just now read that the tornado that touched down was a half mile wide!  That is huge!  

We filled up the tanks on the generators a while ago and have a 5 gallon and a 2 gallon can left.  That will last the night and take us into tomorrow morning, where, if the power isn't back on, we'll have to go ahead and buy even more fuel.  But, it's cheaper than a hotel and far easier dealing with 3 adults, 3 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats and fish, not to mention keeping frozen food - frozen.  We would have had to run at least one generator anyway even if we did go to a hotel.  No savings, really and everyone crammed into a room. 

2 of the kids are in and out of the rooms that are nice and cool. Kids - they don't care that much lol.  Sitting in a hot dining room playing games.  More power to them.