I’m starting to wonder
if the knobs and tubes were built into the house
or if they were added later.
It’s hard to imagine that,
after thousands upon thousands of years of sooty light,
that there was someone ready to install
the odorless electric light
(and all the necessary wires)
way out here, in the middle of the Great Plains,
by 1902. Twenty-three years after Edison’s forty-hour lightbulb.
And if these wires were strung before the plaster,
which, in many ways it seems they must have been,
what an electrician!
A daring man, working with this new form of fire,
stretching out the hots and neutrals,
wrapping them around the knobs, through the tubes,
to this room.
A man of great foresight–
he put wall outlets in when there was hardly a thing to plug into them.
I hope he would be pleased to see
all that I have plugged in
right now.
Photo credit:Â http://www.ge.com/about-us/history/1878-1904