I Got My Wish.... It Shocked Me Anyway!

I spent the morning on the phone trying to figure out where to pay all the bills and getting the addresses changed and all that good stuff that comes on the tail of moving. Most calls were just endless journeys through automated phone systems (which I think are just shy of evil) and digitally voiced prompts. Then it happened. I called the new power company to figure out what the "bill" they sent me was supposed to mean.

They had sent me an application for membership and a "bill" with no amount. My first shock was that a person... a real person.... answered my call and asked how they could help me. I explained what I had received and he told me that up here in Elk the power company is a non-profit and is mutually owned by all the residence. My ten dollar one time fee was to add me to the account that now makes up share holders along with everyone else. Weird but this is not the shocking part I was referring to. Next he explains that the amount wasn't on the bill because you get charged after the usage each month and that the blank was to fill in the number on my meeter.

Here comes the shock, are you ready? You're not really ready, you just think you are LOL! My bill is paid "on the honor system" I am to try to read my meeter about the same time each month and then mail in the new slip with the new reading and the payment for last month. They only check the meeter if a house is sold for legal purposes. I asked if people ever skunk out and he said "Never that I have heard of. Sometimes people have trouble paying but the community usually gets together to help out". Go ahead, read it again... that is really what I just said!
This phone call comes on the tail of me chuckling to myself over the FOUR page spread in the Elk Sentinel (our local paper) with 4X6 photos of each child 9-16 who got their first deer this year (holding up the antlers... with the deer still attached mind you LOL). I feel like I am living on the set of Little House on the Prairie! My friend Leslie is right... I have teleported back to the 1950's and I couldn't be happier!

The top picture is our house from the S. W. and the bottom one is from the East