Well, it’s seven thirty am and I have nowhere to be for an hour so lets see what we can get out. The power was out last night and was still out when I got up this am, it finally came back on around six am. At 6:00 I heard the air kick back on and at 6:01 Mary Beth was grinding coffee to fuel her first day at Boeing.

We had raging torrential storms last night. The first wave hit when I was at bowling, I had called Beth to tell her I’d found my missing debit card and she informed me that the trees in U-city were bending over – implication: get ready cause here it comes. For the next hour or so while we bowled, we kept one eye on the radar screen and the other out the window at the visible front – the five picture windows on the East wall of this second floor bar framed what on television would be mistaken for hurricane footage. On the big screen TV a Doppler radar map showed the whole region covered in some form of yellow or red activity, with the storms lined up like pro leaguers chucking thousand pound balls at the pins of the St. Louis skyline. Zeus and Thor looking to throw strikes while Loki fucks with the power plants, in true trickster god fashion. Then the channel five live feed cut out so like all sane Midwesterners would, we got more drinks and continued to bowl – drink sales were probably up as no one wanted to have an empty cup when the power finally tanked, as at that point we all knew it would.

Every time there was a major lightning flash the jukebox would cut out for a second and the people who were singing along, myself included, could be heard filling in the missing lyrics – imagine huge biker dude with long gray hair and full beard with leather chaps in a Grateful Dead t-shirt filling in the missing bridge “strike the pose” on a Madonna song. Fucking great.

These cut outs grew more and more frequent until finally all of Maplewood went down – accept of course – and here is a great mystery – accept the lights over the pins. Apparently The Saratoga has an emergency power system that feeds the pinsetter and the lights above for just such an emergency. We had seven frames to go when the power kicked and I’ll be damned if we didn’t bowl them out. After every throw you would have to hit the reset button to get your ball to return, and half the time you’d have to walk halfway down the lane to meet your ball. I helped the bartender Paulie light cans of sterno to put out on the bar, and switched to gin and grapefruit – as the tonic was on the soda gun and had no power.

The air conditioner began to drip onto one of our two lanes so we put down some towels and called it the water hazard lane (continuing to bowl on it through the water). At first we used the lights on our cell phones to score by, aiming the green glow at the page, but eventually one of the guys on the other team went out to his truck for a mag light and somebody else showed up with scented candles (cucumber melon). Zack, from the other team, was bowling with the mag light held in his mouth – he actually got a few strikes that way – Vanessa marked as well – scoring the first post blackout strike. Vanessa kept snapping pictures and running short digital movies so we’ll see if those turn out.

After we finished bowling we ended up holding over our tabs, since the ATM was out of commission. The owner showed up with Coleman lanterns, which made it feel like camping. The water dripping from the defunct ac made it feel like a cave. The conversation made it feel like a brothel and the lightning through the plate glass windows outdid any Fourth of July show anywhere. We bullshitted our way into the wee hours as the final patrons in our very own candlelit bar.