FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) – Life has become a little easier for Margie and Alvin Tso.
The couple who raised eight children in the LeChee area of the Navajo Nation did so without a power line running to their home. For Margie Tso, that meant laundering clothes in a tub with a washboard and cooking food on a wood stove. The children did homework under the light of a kerosene or gas lamp and did not have television.
At night, the lights from a nearby power plant illuminated their ranch, but decades would pass before a power line was extended to their home. When Margie Tso heard of a project to connect her home and dozens of others to the power grid, she watched as each power pole came closer and closer. On Monday, the Tsos had electricity for the first time.
Their children “grew up a little bit on the rough side, and so did we along with them,” Margie Tso told The Associated Press. “But we made it through, and now we’re going to enjoy these lights.”
