It is hard to believe there weren’t always street lights in Hinesville. It was in 1924 that Henry Lowe bought and installed a generator on the grounds of the Liberty County Courthouse. He wired the courthouse, a few general stores and homes in the area and Hinesville had its first electric lights.
Electricity is something we all take for granted these days. We don’t even think about the ways we depend on it until a storm knocks our power out. I remember the days when we didn’t have electricity in our home. It is not a time I would like to go back to.
On a summer afternoon in 1951, I stood in the yard and watched the “magician” who had come to our house. He worked on a box attached to the outside wall of the house. The man was an employee from the Canoochee Electric Membership Corporation in Reidsville. He had come to turn on our power. I was 4 years old and very excited about having lights. After a few minutes, he flipped a switch and I heard my older sister Susie holler from the kitchen, “The light is on!” I ran as fast as I could to see the single 40-watt bulb burning over the kitchen table. We pulled the string to see it go off and on again. Purely magic!
The very first thing Mama did was order an electric hot plate for $14 from the Sears catalog. That was the handiest thing I had ever seen. I could fry and egg in the tiny frying pan any time of the day I wanted one without having to build a fire in the wood stove. That hot plate was worth its weight in gold. We used it for many years until it wore out.
As the years went by we added more electric items. We got our first black and white television when I was 12.
When my family got the electric lights, hot plate, television and other conveniences, I never imagined I would someday be writing this story on something called a computer instead of using a No. 2 lead pencil sharpened by a pocket knife. Computers — purely magic!
Electricity is something we all take for granted these days. We don’t even think about the ways we depend on it until a storm knocks our power out. I remember the days when we didn’t have electricity in our home. It is not a time I would like to go back to.
On a summer afternoon in 1951, I stood in the yard and watched the “magician” who had come to our house. He worked on a box attached to the outside wall of the house. The man was an employee from the Canoochee Electric Membership Corporation in Reidsville. He had come to turn on our power. I was 4 years old and very excited about having lights. After a few minutes, he flipped a switch and I heard my older sister Susie holler from the kitchen, “The light is on!” I ran as fast as I could to see the single 40-watt bulb burning over the kitchen table. We pulled the string to see it go off and on again. Purely magic!
The very first thing Mama did was order an electric hot plate for $14 from the Sears catalog. That was the handiest thing I had ever seen. I could fry and egg in the tiny frying pan any time of the day I wanted one without having to build a fire in the wood stove. That hot plate was worth its weight in gold. We used it for many years until it wore out.
As the years went by we added more electric items. We got our first black and white television when I was 12.
When my family got the electric lights, hot plate, television and other conveniences, I never imagined I would someday be writing this story on something called a computer instead of using a No. 2 lead pencil sharpened by a pocket knife. Computers — purely magic!