Electricity By Abraham Lincoln

I believe “education” has been lost to a host of gimmicks that, should the electricity go off for a few weeks, would deliver a nation into the hands of mumbling idiots. The world, as we know it, would stop without electricity—that is how important, the shock that kills people, has become.

Electricity powers your, iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Netbook, Desktop, Laptop and your refrigerator. It is funny, really, how the word, “refrigerator” used to mean “Frigidaire” and was made right here in Dayton, Ohio. Frigidaire factories employed thousands of people who brought home fat paychecks that paid for everything from new cars and homes to college educations.

But now the name refrigerator could mean Samsung or Hotpoint. Frigidaire (look it up on Google) now make lots of things used by folks all over the globe. The name for a refrigerator no longer matters and, increasingly, it doesn’t matter who makes it or where it is made. The buildings where the local refrigerator was made is now either closed or completely gone.

The electricity that powered the Frigidaire refrigerator is still here, on the grid, but the largest refrigerator uses less of it than the smallest model used during the War.



Nobody stops to think about the electricity that opens the garage door for you or wakes you up on time so you can arrive at the office, showered, shaved and smelling good. It is just there ― taken for granted.

Electricity has become the machine that runs our daily lives and keeps our homes comfortable in the coldest winters and hottest summers. People raise hell if it goes out and when it does the call centers are flooded with people who are angry that something isn’t right at their house. “How do you expect me to fix dinner without electricity?”

The famed Ohio Electric Chair that used to be used to cook convict’s brains and make their heads steam has been replaced by a more humane way of killing people – lethal injection. Mind you, a strict policy is enforced: Only clean needles are used in syringes used to kill people—the danger of infection from a dirty needle should be avoided at all costs.

Electricity used to kill people has haunted me ever since I saw hogs being driven onto a sheet of steel. It was like a big saucer because it could be flooded by water. The hogs walked on the sheet and the gate was closed behind them and then the steel saucer was flooded with water.

On the side was an electric pole with a box on it and a switch. When the water rose to the hogs hocks, the switch was thrown and the hogs died from electrocution. I can still hear them squealing and bawling before their throats were slit by sharp butcher knives. Men slit the throats and shoved hooks between the tendon and foot and hung them upside down to bleed out.

I don’t know why my father took me there to see this execution but he did and I still remember it. It made an impression on me that I could do without.