Let There Be Light

Those backyard lights!! They’re the problem!! We keep forgetting to manually turn them off in the morning, Subsequently, they are on all day, wasting electricity and burning out faster. Then we have to hire an electrician, costing at least one hundred dollars just to show up, climb a ladder and replace the bulbs. The purpose of those lights is to fool those nocturnal raccoons or opossums from digging up our backyard foraging for food. Backyard illumination makes those critters think it is daytime so don’t show up. We should have installed the ones like we have on the side of the house. Those sensor bulbs work automatically according to the daylight or darkness message they receive.

Most incandescent light bulbs last about 1500 hours. I looked it up on Google. So how can you account for how long the sensor bulbs on the side of my house are lasting? My nephew Micael installed then over forty years ago, and they are still faithfully coming on at the stroke of dusk and turning off at the stroke of dawn. 

Michael was a bright child, but in our current school system, he would have been classified as academically challenged.  From early childhood he showed an unusual interest and skill in all things that had to do with electricity. In this throwaway society, he would take apart broken appliances and repair them. He was known as the Electric Wizard in his apartment building. The saying was, “Give it to Michael. He will fix it.” When New York City had a major blackout in 1965, the half serious joke was that Micael caused it. This self-taught electrician, in his early twenties started his own lucrative business installing lighting fixtures and burglar alarm systems. Early in his career, he installed my two exterior sensor lightbulbs. I’m not good at doing the math, but for over four decades, I continued to report to Micael, “Yes, your bulbs are still doing the job.”

The fixture still functions like new. I still function like somewhat new but sadly, Michael developed an inoperable brain tumor and sadly my fixture has outlived Michael.

Ethyl Haber