Remember that old joke we used to ask gullible buddies in grade school: "Where were you when the lights went out?" The answer was, "In the dark."

An updated version would be: "Where were you when the lights stayed out?" The answer, of course, is, "In Durham."

While the original joke was one only a 9-year-old could find funny, the new one is funny to no one -- certainly not to Durham Mayor Bill Bell.

Bell's tirade -- OK, he didn't actually lose his trademark cool, but he was visibly ticked off -- probably didn't result in any Durham residents getting electrical power a second earlier, but it may have made them feel empowered to see their mayor facing off with president Bill Coley of Duke Power and demanding to know what was being done to bring the juice back on in Durham.

I watched the mayor on television from a hotel room in Virginia, where I had fled with the family -- and, judging by the license plates in the hotel's parking lot, half of the Triangle -- in search of Thomas Edison's suddenly elusive invention.

Bell and everyone else knows that Durham is already given short shrift in the public relations and perception battles; the mayor was obviously not about to sit back and let it receive second billing from a monopolistic power company that has the city by the long johns. And in them, too.

In the age of political double-speak, of the wan smile when you're seething inside, it was good to see an elected official stand up for his citizens.

When I talked to Bell on Sunday, he had just finished a news conference and a private meeting with Duke Power executives. "I had them in here listening to these messages I'm receiving," he said. "People are angry. ... I need to be able to tell my people something."

Duke's response to last week's storm was dreadfully inadequate -- what, don't they get weather reports? -- as was Coley's response to Bell. He called "wholly incorrect" the impression that "Durham did not receive appropriate services."

It's baffling how he could say that when -- days after the last snowflake fell -- thousands still shiver in Durham shelters or try dangerous, at times fatal, methods to keep warm at home.

I asked Bell if he now accepts Coley's explanation for Durham lagging behind everyone else in receiving power: Coley said Durham got hit worse than other municipalities. (Gosh, does that mean God doesn't like us, either?)

The mayor, who as of Monday night still didn't have power at his house, said, "When you have the president of the company ... telling you they're putting all of their resources into the city, what else can you do? But I have to ask the questions."

Now, no one can blame the power company workers who braved the cold, ice and dark to restore power. Their task was daunting, but they were undaunted. I honked my horn in support just about every time I passed a crew toiling through the night and even offered to pour a 90-proof sandwich to one worker from Georgia Power, leaning against a truck on Washington Street near my dark, cold home: He graciously refused and then disappeared back up the pole.