Let it snow. Bring on the power failures. We’re ready for whatever winter can throw at us.

Well, maybe that’s a bit foolhardy, considering that we are just eight years removed from that once-in-a-lifetime Ice Storm of 1998. We have had it easy this winter, but it’s not yet February.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I moved into a wing of the same farmhouse where we rode out that infamous storm and the frustrating days that followed. With an inoperable furnace at our former Auburn home, Judy and I were fortunate to have my boyhood home as a refuge. The old Queen Atlantic wood stove in the kitchen and half a dozen kerosene-burning parlor lamps kept us cozy. A spring-fed well gave us gravity-fed water right to the basement, so lugging a few buckets of water to the bathrooms was all it took to keep the facilities in operation.

Thanks to principles of self-sufficiency from my father, who was approaching his 90s, and to the skills and labor of my brother, Jim, who still holds this farmhouse together, we survived with a minimum of inconvenience. Although damage from that storm was extensive and expensive, many people recall the positive side and how it brought neighbors together.

That wasn’t L-A’s only encounter with a major ice storm.

On Jan. 29, 1886, much of Maine was coated with ice from a similar storm. News coverage in the Lewiston Journal on Saturday, Jan. 30, was quite low-key and much of the reporting came from elsewhere in the state. Moreover, nothing was in the newspaper the following Monday.

The Lewiston report focused on the state of the telephone, fire alarm and telegraph wires. The telephone wires easily hold a man’s weight at ordinary stretches, but many of them had fallen from the weight of ice.

“Those on Main Street Bridge are drooping so low that they can easily be reached by the pedestrian,” the reports said.

There was very little dependence on electricity for light and heat in 1886, so there is no mention of this for the local scene.

However, Portland streets were lighted in a novel manner that Friday night. The electric wires were either down or considered unsafe, and the gas street lights had been allowed to get out of repair since the introduction of electricity.

“An appeal was made to the citizens, to which they generally responded,” the newspaper said. “Lighted lamps were placed in the windows of nearly every house and by this illumination the traveler was enabled to go on his way rejoicing.”

Of course, downed trees and branches blocked many roads, but citizens took all that it stride. The news was more about the beauty of the ice.

“The Lewiston City Park looked so much like fairy land in winter Saturday that the photographers surrounded it early in the morning and took it in storm,” a news story said.

We may still get a real winter in 2006. A lot of people think a rush to the supermarket is the proper preparation for an oncoming storm. Others have purchased portable generators. This past weekend, we bought a gas-powered log splitter.

We’re ready.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can contact him at [email protected].