"Where was Mother when the lights went out?

"Down in the cellar eating sauerkraut.

"Where was Mother when the lights went out?

"Down in the cellar eating sauerkraut."

I don't know where my Mom got that but it was a bromide we heard frequently growing up.

In those days the lights went out frequently because the power company in Portland kept turning them off and my Pop kept turning them back on again as soon as the light company man was out of sight.

Then when he found some money he paid the bill.

Now when the lights go out they go out all over. It takes over a village.

This time I just put some presto logs in the fireplace and we went to bed.

Next morning I went out to get the paper and there was no paper. First time in 70 years.

Then I noticed that my neighbor's row of poplar trees that deposit an annual daily knee-deep supply of discarded leaves in our yard was missing three of the 80-foot behemoths.

They had blown down after a battering by the big blow and, taking out a big section of his fence, landed smack dab on his pickup truck.

He now has a huge woodpile and next year there will be a more modest leaf supply.

So Elsbeth and I had no morning paper, my laptop was kaput. We wondered about the local havoc by the mighty storm so we set off in the car to find out, even though by the time you read this it was too late to make last week's paper.

It was, of course. like your neighborhood. Huge trees across the roads, guys with chain saws making firewood, people standing on street corners, comparing stories, and lots of turning around to find the way around huge trees across roads.

Burien downtown was as ghostly as a western movie locale. Lots of drivers groping cautiously looking for gas stations and open eateries along dark streets.

Lights out at intersections made hazardous driving but wonderfully, drivers proved cautious and courteous working things out.

We found one dimly lit grocery store and bought some batteries for our portable radio, spent an hour taking dramatic pictures of the storm's spent fury and came back home to make do with peanut butter sandwiches.

We could have done what one of our neighbors did. They booked into a Seattle hotel for the duration. They had television, hot meals, working computers, warm feet and bright lights.

But we had adventure, an extra blanket on the bed, and if we had a cellar Mother might have been down there eating kraut.

Elsbeth would have joined her. She grew up in Germany where stores sold kraut out of big barrels. Clerks dug the delicacy out with a big fork into a cone shaped bag and kids ate it like popcorn. With their fingers.

We made do for four days. Daughter Linda was able to make some great turkey noodle soup and brought it to us.

And son Scott brought us some fresh bread, some tomato soup in containers where you just add hot water, instant mashed potatoes to which you also just add hot water and a bunch of crackers.

On the last day, descending a steep hill there was a line of cars forced to turn around and go back to the top of the hill or take a nervous chance passing under a huge tree across Maplewild. It had blown over the road but was held precariously at a 60-degree angle by a thick loom of wires.

As we watched, a couple of cars stopped while drivers let their passengers out. We watched as the passengers ran hurriedly under the threatening forest leviathan and the car raced through after them, stopping safely out of harm's way to let them back in.

When it was our turn Elsbeth chose to face disaster with me by staying in the front seat as we whooshed through.

We won't ever do that again.