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AMY WIMMER SCHWARBThe family of an elderly woman who relies on power for medical reasons eagerly hopes for the electricity's return.
INVERNESS - From their mother's front porch on Seminole Avenue, sisters Ann Brown and Janelle Abell can look south and see a stoplight blink, look north and see a streetlight beaming, and look east and see a warm lamplight peeking through a neighbor's windows.
Those windows might as well be sing-songing, "na, na, na, nah, naaah." In 82-year-old Wilma Steadman's house, it's dark. The first gusts of Frances knocked out electricity on Saturday.
The lights are flickering on all around them, but Progress Energy line personnel haven't yet reached their corner.
More than 20,000 businesses and residents in Citrus County, including Mrs. Steadman, were still waiting for power Thursday.
"The other day there were two or three power trucks going by," Mrs. Brown said. "And I almost went out and said, "Hey, don't you go nowhere until you fix this.'
"But you can't be mad. I guess they're doing the best they can."
The sisters, who live nearby, are staying with their mother during the storm's aftermath at her house and another next door.
In the wee hours of Thursday morning, as Mrs. Steadman's family worked to crank up their new prize, a generator, there wasn't even a moon in the sky to light their task. Figures. So they worked by the headlights of Mrs. Abell's Mercury Grand Marquis.
The sisters' husbands, Clyde Brown and Raymond Abell, drove to Altamonte Springs on Wednesday to pick up the generator. The Abells' grandson works at Lowe's there, and when a shipment of some 250 generators arrived at the store, he snagged one of eight set aside for employees.
The generator has space to plug in four appliances. Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Abell have just two in mind. "We're going to get Mama's oxygen hooked up," Mrs. Brown said.
"And a fan to put on Mama," Mrs. Abell added.
The sisters keep cold washcloths on their mother's forehead and rub her down with oatmeal cream to keep her cool.
Mrs. Steadman, who worked for more than 30 years for the Citrus County Health Department when it was in the basement of the Historic Courthouse, now a museum, has chronic emphysema and congestive heart failure. She depends on an oxygen machine, which depends on electricity.
She has lived on this downtown Inverness corner since the mid 1950s. The sisters recall a couple of other storms, including Hurricane Donna in 1960, that wreaked havoc on Citrus County. But their home didn't have air conditioning in those days, so they never knew what they were missing.
Like thousands of other people in Citrus, the food has gone bad in Mrs. Steadman's refrigerator. The air in the house has grown muggy and stale. "Mama," as Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Abell call their mother, has a gas-powered stove, so they have been eating hot meals.
They dream of hot showers and clean hair. They gather outside at night and wait for a breeze. "The other night, we wanted the wind to stop," Mrs. Brown said, "and now we want it to blow."
The family has lost track of time and lost touch with the news. They've heard about Hurricane Ivan approaching but don't know when or where, and would just as soon get through Frances first.
Late Thursday afternoon, the family gathered around the kitchen table, yelling at each other over the roar of the generator they had worked so hard to get started. Mrs. Steadman's oxygen was plugged in, and a fan kept her cool.
Her family talked of chaining the generator to the house at night to thwart burglars.
"That thing's like a piece of gold right now," Mr. Brown said.
Outside, a Progress Energy utility truck rolled by on Dampier Street, its yellow lights flashing.