Give Us This Day That Comforting Industrial Hum

In the summer of 2024 we dealt with a power outage of nearly a week after a line of thunderstorms and tornadoes tore through our area. I discovered that my trusty but rarely used generator would not start with propane. After three days I borrowed a small generator to run the fridge and the freezer alternately. That got me through it, but it was miserable with the nighttime heat and no fans to make restful sleep possible. During those nights I kept a piece of cardboard beside the bed so I could fan myself a bit if I woke up hot. We got through it, but a power outage takes way more work to maintain even a reduced comfort level. Not fun.

Then this year, in the middle of the brutal seasonal Heartland heat wave in the middle of July I woke up just before 2 AM. There had been an unusual little beep in the night I thought I heard. Sometimes the printer or the Skylight makes a beep like that. After staring at the dark for a minute or two I turned my head to look at the red glow of the night stand clocks. Both were dark. It hit me then that the power was out. It was very, very quiet. There was no fuzzy bass from the AC unit outside the window. Then I noticed there was no air moving over me, meaning that the fan on the dresser was off. Now it was serious. The power had gone off in the middle of a hot summer night. Great. How long will it take to restore it this time?

I dreaded the prospect of having to sleep during hot nights with no AC and especially with no fan. Getting up quietly without background noise took extra time and care. I looked out the windows and the distant neighbors were dark, too. I had a bad feeling this might last a while but managed to turn over and go back to sleep after what seemed quite a while.

I wrestled with dreams of a drippy refrigerator and melting freezer contents. I thought about emergency meals based on what had thawed overnight. There was the prospect of the hot days, too, with no fan to move the soggy air around in the house. It would be a long night.

I must have eventually drifted off, grateful to be able to stop thinking about it without further ‘awful-izing’ over what must come the next day.

Then about 4 AM I heard the same earlier beep just loud enough to wake me from worried slumber. I waited to see if the sound repeated, but it didn’t. I heard something else, though, the sound of the fan on the dresser and felt the first air it was moving over me. Opening my eyes excitedly, I had good news immediately. Both clocks were glowing bright red, the night light was on in the bathroom, and there was a glow from another night light down the hall. I heard the sound of throaty waves crashing on a shore and smiled. The sound machine had come back on at the default setting of ocean waves. I reached over, switched it to plain white noise and snuggled down in the covers to finish the night with another solid hour’s sleep. The AC kicked on to finish the ensemble. Ahh.

I have written before about Dr. Bob Kerby at Notre Dame telling us that we must impress on our students that things have not always been the way they are today. He was so right. When the power goes off for even a little while we are reminded of just a few of the comforts that preindustrial people never knew.

The industrial revolution gave us many things that make our lives comfortable today. The basis for many of those things is duplicated motion, the endless repetition of simple tasks. First there was muscle, wind, and water, but when steam was harnessed to machinery it became possible to defeat the tyranny of the seasons and for working people to be productive the year round. There would be no more idle winters when the mill ponds and canals froze and no more waiting for the wind to turn the windmill’s arms to grind grain. Then came internal combustion and after that electricity.

Repetitive motion turned wheels and pumped water. It moved coal and stone in carts on tracks. It tripped hammers and turned propellers. It turned a spinning mule then turned a power loom. It blew air into a Bessemer furnace and turned the wheels to roll rails. Using coal and oil and electricity it made most everything available to the very poorest of us, changing all our lives for the better. Steam, then oil made the repetitive motion that moved people and grain in cars on tracks. These and so many other improvements changed the world and gave us the inexpensive comforts we depend on today.

Where the industrial revolution went, famine fled to become only a distant memory. Material amenities increased year by year. Diets improved. Education and carefree childhoods became possible. Every aspect of our lives has been made easier. For many decades now the poorest among us have enjoyed more creature comforts than even royalty could purchase not very long ago.

When the power came back on that night it was the relaxing sound of repetitive motion of fan blades and AC pumps and the blower to move the cool air around that lulled me back into smiling sleep.

Let us never forget what we owe the investors and engineers and mechanics and industrial workers who gave us all this abundant life we take for granted today. When the power goes out we may urgently murmur ‘restore to us this day that comforting industrial hum.’

Dr. Bruce Smith (Inkwell, Hearth and Plow) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II,  may be ordered from Indiana University Press.