Electricity was a wonderful blessing to the people of the wee town of Alliston in the old days and indeed, to the whole world. The nights were much darker around the community before those long wires carried the miracle of electric power to even the humblest of homes.

Suddenly, our streets were illuminated and lights shone from every home throughout the community, and then, even the farms were joined to the system and we had entered a new era.

Scientists and inventors were experimenting with electrical current at least a hundred years before William Fletcher and his son ever hiked into the forests where he would build our town on the banks of the Boyne River. They discovered an ideal place to build a dam, more or less north of the place where Paris Street meets Victoria Street and a footbridge exists today.

They had a dream of using the tremendous force of flowing water to spin a turbine, which in turn would transmit the energy that could turn heavy grindstones that would grind grains into food for man and livestock, in the growing pioneer community. The idea was a practical one and they probably could not foresee that there would also be another wonderful, new source of power that the waters of the Boyne would one day provide.

In the 1700s, a man named Dr. Benjamin Franklin had experimented with electrical current. At the same time others were doing the same in France. They knew about the existence of electricity in the world and that it had always been there since the Creator first installed all the wonderful laws of nature on this beautiful little planet.

Franklin was very interested in the great electrical energy of lightning and his experiments with his famous kite are legendary. It is a fascinating story to read. Old documents talk about the lightning rod he placed on the roof of his house with a wire running to a hand pump for grounding. Much to the irritation of his wife, every time the current came down the wire it rang two little brass bells in their house.

When I was a little boy there was electricity in Alliston but it was not yet available to those of us on the farms.

William Fletcher, the town's founder and his sons were great businessmen and soon they discovered that their water power from the river could also run an electrical generator. Being men of foresight, they envisioned a whole new source of revenue for the Fletcher Company.

Pretty soon, they had an electrical generator rigged up and providing them with hydro power. Of course, it was the talk of the town. Everyone came to see their wonderful light that never required oil, as did their lamps and lanterns. It didn't take the town fathers long to install a few street lights along Victoria Street. The country folk flocked into the town on Saturday night to stand and talk along the illuminated street. Of course it was not as bright as the lights of later times but to those folk it seemed so much brighter than the pale yellow glow of the coal-oil lanterns.

Of course, the townsfolk soon put their names on the waiting list to get one of those new fangled electric lights in their homes, never dreaming of the many appliances that this mysterious energy would one day power.

Those were busy times for the Fletcher Company and apparently they had lots of "irons in the fire." From sawmills and gristmills, the family became town builders and land speculators and then, an electrical company, advertising a hook up of a light bulb in the home for only a few cents.

Their electricians were working overtime trying to keep up with the demand and a whole new field was about to open up as inventors began to turn out electrical appliances. For the first time, Alliston was about to have stores that sold electrical appliances. Many of the old grandparents just shook their heads in disbelief and this was only the beginning.

When I was a little boy, our country home was lit by coal-oil lamps and most evenings everyone stayed in the big farm kitchen, the only place where there was any light.

I had to be pretty close to the lamp to do my school homework and the light was pretty dim. If I turned the wick up a little higher, it started to smoke and blacken the glass.

When my brother Billy and I went to the barn with Dad to do the night chores we always took the old lantern and there were nails in the ceiling beams where it would be hung, depending where the work was. Many a barn was burned because of accidents with the lanterns and lots of houses too.

Eventually, a power company began to string hydro lines out into the country. Our farm was just outside of Alliston, on the west side and one day after school I saw that my father had peeled a few tall, cedar poles and planted a line of them up our long lane.

Soon the Emms Electric Company of Barrie Ont. wired our farmhouse and even the barn, including a yard light on a tall cedar pole in the centre of the yard.

What a thrill it was to play outside under the light, and to click the old brown light switches on and off. Pretty soon, farm neighbours started arriving to see this modern farm marvel. One of them said to his wife, "Grab your hat. We' re going to Braden's farm. I see a light in their farm yard."

Pretty soon, our whole Alliston valley was dotted with lights. Dad ripped out the old hand pumps and bought an electric water pump. Then he installed a modern, flush toilet and never again did we light the lantern to stumble through the snow drifts to that freezing cold, little outhouse. My brother and I had to find a new place to learn the bad habit of smoking cigarettes (which I quit at age 6).

It is interesting that electricity was always there but man didn't know about it. It was there since God created the planet and apparently he would reveal this knowledge to humans when the time was right.

Who knows what other source of energy is out there just out there waiting for a time of need. We've come a long way but that's the way we were then.

For more about the history of old Alliston see next Tuesday's edition of the Alliston Herald.

Ralph Braden is about to publish his first book based on these columns entitled The Way We Were Then.