Tough Streak Lives In Still-Dark Neighborhood

It was the fifth day of the blackout, and Lorene Cady wasn’t budging from the Shadle Park home that’s been hers for 35 years.

It didn’t matter what her frustrated son said, or the nice young man from Washington Water Power Co.

“You should go,” the utility man shouted into Cady’s nearly deaf ear on Saturday. “We’re worried about people like you.”

Cady, 82 and independent as a teenager, shook her head. “I used to ice skate, so I’m used to the cold,” she said.

Besides, something might happen to her house while she’s staying at Mike Cady’s warm Spokane Valley home.

Who would collect the mail?

Who would watch the plants?

“It (the power) won’t be off much longer. That’s what they said,” Cady said, nodding to a television that hasn’t worked since Tuesday.

Few have suffered more from the power outage than folks in Cady’s neighborhood west of Alberta Street, where the houses were built in the 1940s for a flood of returning GIs.

They are tiny boxes filled with elderly couples, widows, single adults and young families who replaced the GIs one house at a time.

The temperature inside houses that haven’t been improved with insulation, modern windows or wood stoves was dipping into the low 40s by Saturday.

“It’s been dropping a couple of degrees every day,” said Rick Bertholf, 32, who joined his wife and son at a relative’s house Friday night.

“Once it got below 50, I left.”

Bob Curran burned cedar scraps from his fence to keep his house in the 50s. Sammy the cocker spaniel and Canoe the cockapoo wore sweaters.

For the first time in years, Curran broke out a jigsaw puzzle - 1,000 pieces that eventually will become Mount Rundle.

“Lots of blue in there,” said Curran, 54. “That’s going to take me a while.”

Margaret Gunter, 75, was cozy in the home she’s had since 1961.

She had a natural gas fireplace installed in September, her cats were purring and her daughter up the street was fixing stew on a Coleman stove.

Cassie Dolan, 48, said the neighborhood is pulling together. Young neighbors are checking on older ones. People who have wood stoves are hosting those who don’t.

“We aren’t nosy, but we keep an eye on each other,” she said.

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