“I have a long history with generators, not all of it great but certainly remarkable. When I built my first home, it was on a piece of land sold to me by friends who wanted me on the hill, with a joint vision of raising our kids together. Which we did successfully, until things fell apart. There was no power line in the area, and we weren’t about to try to bring one up. I was coached by my builder, who ran his own off-grid home using an Onan generator, and we built a little shed for it, back in the days when generators were not enclosed units. Finding experienced technicians willing to work with customers using generators alone to run a house, plus rudimentary solar, was challenging. The bigger companies who mostly served industrial clients had close to no patience for the little guy. It was still mostly a sport for homesteaders who were able to field some of their own problems, and that usually meant a couple with a handyman husband. However I was a single mom with three kids under the age of six, and no husband. This was not a super ideal situation, from anyone’s point of view. A few of my cohorts, had empathy, or on a bad day, sympathy, or they tolerated my independent ways on principle. In reality, I had to lean hard on the people closest to my predicament, who cared about the welfare of children, & who lived by the maxim “it takes a village”. As much as I struggled, they struggled too, on my behalf. I was uncomfortable having to ask for help, but it was never impossible to find kind souls within reach, as long as I didn’t fall apart. I was too busy to spend my time mulling over the philosophical underpinnings of what I was doing. I had to wake up each day, and be the rock. Nothing noble here, just plain and simple I was forced to develop a pragmatic approach, that I live by to this day. The next house had an old Kohler generator. It sat in the corner of the woodshed. This property was also a mile or so from the nearest power line. Again, there was little incentive or financial ability, to bring the grid into our haven of quiet. At 1800 feet elevation, the special quality of being divided from easy electricity, still held some appeal. But, as with the first house, it was hard to find technicians willing to travel to deal with ailing equipment that was being pushed to the max. If I was lucky, the mechanics of my generator problems would only require basic support due to freezing fuel lines, something the local car repair expert could handle. But this piecemeal aid continued to tax the heroic efforts of a handful of men. One electrician rode his Ducati motorcycle from an hour away, to help us, on Christmas day. Eventually, with the addition of another adult the household, it became slightly easier to cultivate better relationships, often with young entrepreneurs moonlighting their fledgling generator repair businesses. Our best tech would come in after working on the Kohler, and spend an hour or often more, chatting with us in the kitchen, unthawing his hands. I made it a habit to be ready with home baked chocolate cookies, when he came down from the northeast kingdom. I think there was one more generator, after that, when I became single again. This one had a new location, away from the house, but lost its remote switch almost immediately, which required me to wade thru waist deep snow late at night, to hit the run switch, and even then, it was never a sure thing that it would fire. We could not have survived this new period, without Bill. Somehow from this point on, it was Bill, my neighbor, who knew what to do, and he did it without payment, and without complaint, for as long as it took me to finally sell the house. The generator was clearly being pushed beyond its reasonable life expectancy, but somehow Bill kept it running. Everything about my life at this point was unsustainable, but I was stuck in place, and unable to get out from under my situation, until the real estate market moved in my favor, a seeming fluke or unexpected boon, in 2020. I’m only telling this story, because of how the tables have turned. Today, prepping for what looks to be a nasty ice storm coming, I met my newest tech, who arrived to service my newest machine. This is my third Kohler, if memory serves me, but it is a miracle of modern circuitry and invention. Granted, I was only able to get this able workman on site today, due to pressure asserted by my son, who works in the construction industry. Things are easier, but also harder in some ways. That’s a longer story, but for the moment, if the grid goes down this weekend, my sorry ass will be covered.”
