I love coal burning power plants. I really do!
However good I think my survival abilities might be out in the wilderness.. I electricity! The kids aren’t as much of “outside kids” as I was growing up but they can keep themselves busy inside or out.. except when they feel forced to I guess.. and the freezing rain outside isn’t a very condusive atmosphere for fun and frolic I must say.
We lost power, again, for about 16 hours yesterday.. from 9am until at least 1am on Wednesday morning. We spent most of the day out and about.. because of the contrived boredom my kids exhibited. We needed to return in-laws dog back to them anyway. We had taken Buff in for about two months. We did some shopping at the great mall for jeans that Sarah, our second daughter needed. (C.J., our oldest, is getting the hand-me-downs now haha) and for some Christmas ideas.
I’m not a big fan of the Great Mall of the Great Plains.. it’s.. well I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it. I guess a mall should have two levels.. call me crazy. 
I know a mall is a mall is a mall.. NOT. Ok.. let’s go back to our teen aged years.. back to the days of Pac-man, Donkey Kong and Frogger.. back to the Rubik’s cube, MTV playing actual music and Deloreans being the coolest cars on the planet.. Duran Duran is playing on your Sony Walkman.. and there were sqaure, green, cursors blinking on your Apple ][. A time when going to the mall to hang out was the “thing to do” by the cool crowd. Everyone went to the mall.. the jocks, geeks, freaks, brains, stoners.. they all went to the mall because “cool kids” went to the mall. Yes I went to the mall too. I never really spent a lot of time hanging out there though. I mostly went and wondered how totally awesome it would be to have the whole place to yourself and a skateboard!
Metcalf South mall was our mall. Oak Park was the big flashy new one.. but Metcalf South was “ours”. My dad made the big mistake of telling me that my brother had gotten in trouble for finding a way onto the roof of it and something about the police being involved.. Weeeeeelll.. you know what my teenage ambition became. As if I didn’t already have enough of it already. Being on the roof of things was.. well it was awesome! Especially if it wasn’t easy to get up on. First was school roofs.. and the fear of being seen up there. There was a fear of being caught, but at the same time, you kinda wanted somebody to see you for that shock factor. What’s that kid doing up there!? Depended on who saw you as to whether you then wanted to be seen or not.. Another kid that knew you.. yes! A neighbor of the school that didn’t know you from Adam? Then you might get in trouble. A teacher or janitor? No. School’s coach of anything.. No. They seemed to be able to identify everybody from just a flash glance.. don’t ask me why.
Metcalf South’s roof.. seemed an insurmountable feat. My brother had gotten up there though.. I had never heard of anyone else getting onto the roof. It would have gotten around. My brother is 17 years older than I am, mind you. There was a generation between us for somebody else to have gotten up there and enough time gone by that the word had not spread through the kid’s grapevine.. Months I spent riding around the outside of the mall.. looking for some chink in the perpendicular armor of the brick fortress. I finally came to only even remotely possible chance of having to scale up the circular tube tile facade that was the front side of the tower thingy that the flags were on.. and then swing across some bars to another foothold place that had a difficult jump to a place that offered more foothold and climbing spot. It was pretty far up in the air though.
I chickened out once when I got up there.. but I finally did get onto MS mall’s roof! I made my way all around checking out what I could.. and before I was ready to get down.. I stood on the west side, toward the main parking lot and made sure that people below saw me haha.. then I beat a hasty retreat to the other side where I could drop down onto low cedar bushes and the ground, on the east side of the mall. None of my friends believed me and really doubt anyone in the parking lot recognized me..
Some time later, while waiting at a light at 95th and Metalf one day, I craftily brought up the subject to my father about Doug having been on the roof and he started in about the trouble, stupidity, whatever, blah blah haha.. He looked at me and asked me if I would ever try anything so foolheardy.. and it seemed to me, almost imperceptibly, that he was hoping for an affirmative answer, that yes.. I too had been up there. Not sure why.. it really is just a stupid, foolish thing that only seemed important to me at the time and for what reason I can’t say now.. it just did..
I gave him a wry grin and said “Me? Up there? Why would I go up there?” and he gave a fake “harrumph” and kept driving..
I guess that’s why I think malls should have two levels 
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