P
Texas
STRONG by Diane Ciarloni | photos courtesy of Lisa Britten
eople in Texas don’t have a high level of confidence in weather forecasts. The first problem is the predictions are wrong more often than they’re right. The second wrinkle is they nearly always change more than a few times between issuing the information and the moment of actual occurrence. So who cares? And why? As it all turned out, millions of Texans
Lisa Britten, owner of the recently opened
leading up to Valentine’s because
bundled up in her Aubrey home. She had
should have cared during the days what happened was brutal.
Snow began falling. People laughed and joked. Kids called out, “Mama, let’s build
a snowman.” It was all fun and games until residents began realizing the snow wasn’t stopping and the temperatures were still dropping, not bottoming out one night until they hit negative 2 degrees.
The entire nation began reading the
story of Texas’ struggling electrical grid.
Linnybird Bakeshop in Lake Dallas, was
to cook and to deliver throughout Denton County. My shop is set up to bake — not to cook. That’s the reason for the frozen dinners.”
the Internet.
Lisa realized she’d bitten off far more than
“One man chopped up his furniture for
firewood in order to keep his family warm. A woman rummaged through cabinets for old Halloween candy,” she said.
“That wasn’t right. I had to do something to get heat into those bellies.”
rolling blackouts; power for an hour for
17-miles of ice and snow-covered roads
dealt with chattering teeth.
was going 90 miles per hour, and she
Those who allegedly knew best instigated
rounded up her adult children and hit the
folks over here while folks over there
separating her from her shop. Her mind had a plan when she pulled into Linnybird’s parking lot.
Hickory Creek. There was one blackout at
“We had a fantastic week leading up to
The power was gone. The lucky ones had
keep cupcakes in the shop for more
for hundreds of indoor thermostats to
profit and intended to put it back into the
approximately 2:00 a.m. and….that was it.
Valentine’s,” she explained. “We couldn’t
a fireplace and wood. It didn’t take long
than a few hours each day. I had a nice
fall into the 30s.
business with one of those super-duper
10 | LAKE CITIES LIVING | MARCH 2021
the money to buy frozen lasagna dinners
Somehow, word spread faster than
listened to and read stories coming across
It teetered on the brink of total collapse.
lake communities of Lake Dallas and
over those 17-miles, though, said to use
power but was trying to conserve. She
Lisa, also known as the Sugar Queen,
Something went wrong in the cozy
refrigerators for the shop. The plan I made
imagination. It didn’t take long before
she could chew. So, in that moment, she calmed down and decided to do what she could do.
Lisa took her cupcake profit money and bought every lasagna dinner she could
find. She started baking and delivering, but the mountain of requests just grew higher.
“I had no idea there were so many cold, hungry, hurting people out there,” she said. “Thank goodness, Joe Flowers,
owner of Joe’s Bait and Tackle in Lake
Dallas, was in touch with me early the next morning. I just couldn’t do it alone.”
Flowers, also known locally as the Lake Cities King of Redneck Podcasts, had one question for Lisa.
“I just asked her to tell me what I could do to help make it happen,” said the big-
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