For his sermon title the Palm Sunday speaker at the Olive Hill Church chose “Normal isn’t returning, Jesus is Returning.” Instead of his normal attire when delivering a sermon, the speaker wore a T-shirt with those words printed on the front. A member of the congregation saw the T-shirt in a Marysville shop and purchased it.
Not only did the sermon have a far from normal theme, so did the Sunday school and worship service hours at Olive Hill for the Webber electrical power circuit served by Rolling Hills Electric lost power a bit after 8 a.m. Sunday morning.
Fortunately there was power available to run the furnace and warm the building prior to the power failure. And as a bonus it was a bight, sunny day with no wind and a moderate outdoor temperature.
Blankets were available for those who were feeling the chill.
I was dressed and ready to leave home when the call came reporting the power was out. Optimistic that our severe winter weather was over I had put my winter underwear away. However, when I learned the power was out, I changed my plans, delayed departure and added extra layers of clothing before heading off to the Palm Sunday service. I have since left the layers out in case they are needed for this week’s sunrise service.
The loss of power made for several adjustments. The pianist opened the door to the pastor’s study and moved the piano to where a beam of light streaming through the two study windows illuminated her music.
The morning sermon was delivered from a corner of the sanctuary that also was illuminated with light coming through a window.
While it may have been a first for some members of the congregation, holding services at Olive Hill without electricity is not new.
When the building was constructed, about 95 years ago, electricity was not an option. Only natural light was used during the day.
I’m not sure how it was illuminated at night in the early years, but there is evidence gas lights were used. As the church is not located on a natural gas pipeline, I suspect the gas was generated on-site.
The church also had more windows in the early days. Several of those windows have since been removed, reduced in size or in someway covered.
Electricity came to the Olive Hill community before World War II. It did not reach the country school I attended until the 1950s. I remember the large gasoline lamp with mantels that hung in the center of the school room when there were night meetings. In the daytime, the classroom depended upon natural light steaming through the windows. For nighttime activities, I remember watching the men of the district gathering in the school kitchen, filling light tanks, pumping up the pressure and adjusting the flame and hanging lamps through out the building. The cloak rooms and kitchen had brackets for smaller lamps. The main classroom had a sky hook. A weighed rope with hook on the end was pulled from the ceiling, the lamp was hung on the hook and allowed to slowly ascend until it lit the entire room.
I remember when both the school and church were heated by coal fired furnaces which had to be tended to before the rooms began to heat. After electricity arrived, the furnaces were adapted to also require the use of electricity. When the power was on, they required less work. When the power was off, they produced little heat.
On school day mornings when the furnance had not aequately warmed the building, our desks were slid to the side and we kept warm with square dance lessons.
Square dancing was not considered appropriate for a church worship service.
When my grandfather built a new home and later a gasoline station along the Kansas-Nebraska stateline, electricity had not yet come to that section of the country.
Gasoline was pumped out of the underground tanks by moving a metal handle from left to right. Fifteen gallons of gasoline was pumped into an elevated glass tank and allowed to flow by gravity into the vehicle’s tank. I remember watching my father and grandfather pump the fuel up and wished I was big enough to do it. But alas, by the time I was big enough, electricity powered the pumps.
Unlike many neighboring homes that had only kerosene lamps, the Blauvelt home and gasoline station had electric lights. Grandfather had purchased a windpowered generator apparently designed and sold by a Hardy businessman named Ross Lance. When the wind blew, it spun a generator which charged a bank of batteries built with glass jars.
My father said when they used the wind generator, they were never without electricity. However, when they switched to power generated by the Superior hydro plant, they didn’t always have electricity.
Their wind system wasn’t expected to power anything more than a few lights.
The family’s one radio ran off of batteries which were changed once a year. Grandfather was a baseball fan and each fall he purchased a new set of batteries so he could listen to the World Series.
When the great Republican River Flood of 1935 swept down the valley, many lives were apparently saved because people heard on their battery powered radios news bulletins about the approaching flood.
My family wasn’t among those listening to a radio and hearing about the approaching flood. As the flood came about nine months after new batteries were last purchased, I suspect those batteries had died. Intead they received a call from Oswin Keifer, a farmer living southwest of Bostwick.
He reported the river was the highest he had ever seen it and told them to get off the bottom.
Grandmother was reluctant to leave her home and said it the flood waters reached the house, she would climb the windmill tower. Fortunately, she reconsidered that plan. When the flood arrived, the tower was swept away.
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