MONSIEUR GASTON'S SOUVENIRS
"ELECTRICITY "
It was a 25000 volt line.
It was lying on the ground
and from time to time, it would move like a snake.
It was still live.
It was jumping, rearing up
like a wild horse, threatening to hit us like a whip with each bounce.
Nevertheless, we stayed there,
fascinated, hypnotized by the flashes, white, blue, red, that were exploding
whenever the end of the wire would hit the ground, to rebound, sending us
yelling our fear.
The storm had been terrible.
Here and there, laying on
the ground, were threes, hit and split by lightning, parts of houses, sheds
roof, torn away by the wind and pieces of garbage of all kinds.
The wire had been broken
by a fallen tree branch.
We were there, about ten
of us kids, fascinated, watching the wire jump, not realizing the danger
lying in wait for us.
The wire was running behind
the Turgeon's* house and was broken such that thirty feet lay on the ground.
«Don't touch it, yells
Jean. An electric wire, it is dangerous. Watch the flashes.»
The wire was almost cutting
off the alley from one side to the other and was still wriggling like a
snake.
Monsieur Bergeron*, the same
one that had supply us with grapes, comes out with garbage for the collectors,
right behind his store.
He sees us, realizes the
situation.
«Hey, kids, get the
hell away from that wire. It is dangerous.»
He comes by and takes the
situation into his own hands.
«An electric wire that
hangs like that is dangerous. And it is still alive. Get away if you don't
wanna die young. Get me that piece of two by four there, » he said.
I don't remember who brought
it to him, because everything happened so fast.
Monsieur Bergeron takes the
two by four and tells us:
«I am going to take
it out of the way, because somebody could get hurt by that.»
And so, no sooner said than
done.
His feet were in a puddle
of water and as soon as he touched the wire with his piece of wood, the
current sent him waltzing several feet away, unconscious.
The wire, a few feet away
from him, was wriggling and sending flashes all over the place.
«Guys, if we leave
him there,
he is going to die,»
someone says
«We have to get that
wire away from him. But how can we do it? Somebody go and call the cops.»
In the meanwhile, somebody
grabs a piece of wood and throws it against the wire, that backs away a
few feet. He repeats the operation until the wire is far enough from Monsieur
Bergeron.
I think that it is what saved
his life.
A police car arrived a few
minutes later. They called an ambulance that took him to the hospital.
He had to stay in the hospital
for a few months. When he came out, he was half paralyzed and I remember
that, whenever he was seeing us, he would say:
«Kids, electricity
is dangerous. Better not play with it.»
*Names have been changed.