I was going through a backup hard drive today and came across a file of photos (see video below) I’d taken during the major ice storm that shut down Northern Kentucky and much of Southern Ohio in 2004. I’m sure you all have stories to tell as does my family.

Like everyone, we lost power and it caught us unprepared. We had a generator but no gasoline or oil. So, we did as well as we could by the light of the propane insert in our woodstove. The wiser thing would have been to take the insert out and revert to burning wood. In no time we could have had it 80 degrees or better in the downstairs of the house. Instead, it was just above 40 degrees.

So, we all crowded into the living room, put a dozen layers on, and prepared food on a Coleman camp stove to the light of a Coleman lantern.

A day or two later the roads were open enough to get to Hillsboro where we obtained everything needed to get the generator fired up. A friend in the plumbing and heating business loaned us a couple of electric heaters and we were able to get the temperature into the high 50s. We were also able to get the satellite TV fired up along with the satellite Internet.

We hauled water from a nearby farm’s spring house and used the screened-in porch as the freezer and the pantry as the fridge. We flushed the commode by cracking the ice on top of the swimming pool and carrying in 5-gallon buckets of water.

On Christmas Eve my two sons-in-law went to their homes and brought back one present for each of the grandkids and come Christmas morning, Santa had paid a visit in spite of the everything. Fifteen years later it is still mentioned that 2004 was the best Christmas ever. A family couldn’t have been brought closer together.