Or power.

Or real snow shovels.

Or hot food.

But people around Richfield are getting along. By about 1 o’clock Tuesday, the Food Lion store at the intersection of Highways 49 and 52 had power and was doing a brisk business in the basic Bs — beer, bread and batteries.

The only other store open in the shopping center was the video store. So someone in the vicinity must have power, but it’s not on Millingport Road or other secondary roads, which didn’t get even a scrape and a promise until late Tuesday.

Drivers of vehicles on these roads stuck to the center, staying in ruts cut by a few trucks before them, in a long game of frozen chicken. When cars came nose to nose, one would stop to let the other edge on by or turn into a lane.

Sometimes the drivers would lower their windows to exchange a greeting, even if they didn’t know each other.

U.S. 52 was in better shape, and the parking lot at Vern’s Country Corner had a steady stream of people buying gasoline for their generators.

At Servco, people waited in line for kerosene. Niki Morton, a checker at the Richfield Food Lion, said her Kerosun was keeping her small home warm.

A kerosene heater and a fireplace kept one room warm in Marlin and Dana Wright’s house. Normally, they heat with propane, but the circulating fan and thermostat need electricity to work.

An older oil-burning furnace in the basement still works, but it won’t operate without electricity either. In the basement, a wood-burning stove, built several decades ago by welder Guy Hammill, works even without electricity — when there’s enough wood to keep it going.

Butch and Wanda Brooks had a similar almost-but-not-quite solution — solar panels to heat hot water. But the pump that carries water to the heater runs on electricity.

Mixing fuels worked out a little better for Jed and Bonnie Brooks because they have a gas fireplace as well as a wood fireplace and stove. Jed Brooks didn’t get to enjoy much of the warmth, though, because he spent most of the day helping people outside.

Some just needed help getting out of the ditch.

A falling tree mashed the roof of one family’s mobile home, presenting more serious problems. Brooks helped cover their roof with plastic to keep the inside of the home dry.

The Brookses and members of New Mount Tabor United Methodist Church built a fire for an elderly home-bound couple. The man has Alzheimer’s disease, and neighbors are keeping an eye on them.

Problems extend beyond Richfield, on into Albemarle, where Rickie Dennis, the Richfield Food Lion’s bookkeeper, lives.

She said people from the store drove to Albemarle to pick her up. They measured 14 inches of snow in her driveway, and so far, she hasn’t been able to get the family’s cars in or out.

One of her cars is frozen in the Food Lion parking lot, anyway. It has been since this mess started, and she closed out the store Monday night, she said. Now the lot is a glaze of ice, but nobody has fallen because they’re all being so careful, Dennis said.

Then there’s John Risley, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a runner, who lives on Millingport Road. John runs many miles on Millingport Road every day, no matter what.