No electricity still a shock in frozen Davis

12/29/2000 By Jay C. Grelen Staff Writer

DAVIS — James Gaddy was a man of few words when he returned home from Texas at noon Thursday and laid eyes on his grove of ice trees, which until Tuesday morning had been a grove of pecan trees.

“Gollllllllleeeeeeeee!” he said, almost as a whisper, as he stepped through ice tree limbs on his back patio, the sun bright on his shaved 69-year-old head.

Then silence, except for the startling bump of ice chunks hitting the tin roof of a shed.

“Man!”

Silence.

“I’ve been here 41 years. I’ve never seen nothing like this. .... Wow! .... Whooee! Looks like it would take a dozer a week to clean it up.”

Gaddy left home for Texas on Christmas afternoon. He telephoned his son from Fort Worth on Wednesday and heard the first report of the severity of the storm. He is just one of thousands in southeastern Oklahoma who have seen the towns and countryside transformed into an ice palace, one without electricity (and no promise of any for several days yet), where the only running water was shed from icicles melting off roofs.

In downtown Davis, where water was in short supply, they resorted to melting ice to make coffee. A busload of people was stranded in Davis for two days, and a supply of cots stood at the ready at City Hall.

The freezing rain that fell Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday stuck to anything and everything, rendering this part of the world a wonder of glassy sculptures, lit brilliantly Thursday by a hide-and-seek sun that hadn’t shown its face for days.

For a force of nature that has dealt so much misery to a region, its works of art are mighty pretty. Stalactites of ice hung from barbed wire, telephone lines and telephone poles like saw teeth. Ice draped like lace on wire fence. Ice-caked clusters of pecans hung from limbs and looked like ice magnolias.

But for those thawing out in Davis, it wasn’t the beauty but the storm’s works of treachery that were foremost on their mind. Davis was one of several Oklahoma communities that lost electricity and water during the storm. Thursday morning, as the sun melted ice from the streets and trees, a generator was powering the water plant, so most everyone had water. Electricity was another matter.

“It’s been flickering on and off all morning,” said David Rives, 18, who, as the only man in his house, drew the duty of dragging fallen limbs from the back yard to the street. David, his mother, Theresa, his sister, Stella, and his girlfriend, Crystal Kelly, huddled in the living room during the storm with their dog Rosie.

“You wouldn’t believe how many candles we had,” Theresa Rives said. “We burned every candle we got for Christmas.”

Richard and Dawn Hood and their daughter Cloe, 2, went nearly two days without water, and Thursday morning, they still didn’t have electricity. They stored their milk and a few other perishable foods on the porch, where the temperature was colder than their powerless refrigerator.

“People may think twice about total electric after this,” she said.

Since they earn their living from electricity, that’s not what Gene Fryar and Gary Richards of Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. wanted to hear as they watched a loaner crew of linemen from Kansas work on OG&E’s main power feeder line through Davis.

“We’re glad to see the sun shine,” Fryar said as Kansans in a cherry picker repaired a line above him.

Gary Parsons, also of OG&E, who concedes the last couple of days have been miserable, offered this suggestion for residents: “If you’ve got power, turn your porch light on and leave it on. That’s a good way to leave us a sign.”

Dan and Susan Nelson didn’t have electricity for their porch light, but they had plenty of heat on the porch. They were grilling meat over charcoal so it wouldn’t spoil in their freezer.

“No pictures,” Dan said, indicating his two-day stubble. “We’re better off than most. We at least have a fireplace. We’re almost out of wood.”

This has, he says, been an experience.

“My wife is always saying she’d like a little cabin without electricity. She’s had it. She decided she didn’t like it. It feels like we’ve been here a week, and it’s been two days.”

-- robert waldrop (rmwj@soonernet.com), December 29, 2000