OTTO • For nearly five years in the early 1980s, the Schletts lived without electricity.

They stored groceries in a gas-powered icebox, ate dinner by the light of coal lamps, listened to ballgames on a battery radio. They installed a windmill to generate a little power for lighting. They had no air-conditioning, no toaster or fans.

They did it to take a stand, to make a point.

At the center of the dispute was a fire hydrant.

It was a simple matter. Ed Schlett didn't think he should have to pay to install a hydrant near his family's new home off old state Highway 21 in Jefferson County. The fire district disagreed. And so the district refused to sign an occupancy permit, and so the power company refused to turn on the power.

Schlett and his wife, Marge, were in a tough spot. They sued, never imagining the resolution was nearly five years away.

You can imagine the reaction of Schlett's children, especially the youngest, then a teenager, suddenly forced to pretend like they were living in the 19th century. You can see how Ed Schlett might be thought of as some kind of anti-government extremist. And you might believe that once the court battle was over and the electricity restored that the issue was over, a tidy bow on a story that attracted national headlines.

But that's not what happened down at the only house on Windmoor Drive. Even when you're in the right and the fight is over, there's a price to pay.

Schlett was a carpenter by trade. He and his boys knew how to build houses. They'd done it a dozen times, as a sideline, selling each one. Then Schlett decided to build his own house about 35 miles south of St. Louis. He and his boys poured the concrete foundation. They paved the driveway. They hung the drywall. They shingled the roof. They laid down the yellow linoleum in the kitchen. After eight months, they had a modest three-bedroom ranch. It was 1979. They were ready to move in.

But the Antonia Fire Protection District insisted Schlett first pay $2,000 for a fire hydrant, to be installed by the main road. A local ordinance required a hydrant within 600 feet of any home. The Schlett house sat back several hundred feet from the road. The new hydrant would be pretty far from him, but pretty close to a small subdivision across the street. Schlett felt the cost should be shared.

"He believed in fairness," says Schlett's youngest son, Tony.

Schlett had no problem playing by the rules, his family says. He was accustomed to inspectors and red tape. He had been a city councilman in nearby Arnold.

"Dad didn't mind paying his fair share," Tony Schlett says. "But this wasn't fair."

The father might sound like a hard man. Stubborn. But he was "happy go lucky," recalls Tony Schlett, sitting in the kitchen of the old house. "Don't you think?"

"Yeah, he was," agreed his brother, Mike.

Just look at the old newspaper photo, shot when the Schletts' case was in the news: The father bears a big, crooked smile — carefree as they come — an arm around his beaming wife, the house in the background.

Most people have limits to how far they'll go in the pursuit of something, such as five years without power. Schlett was undeterred. Tony Schlett was in high school and still living at home when the power went out. Some kids gave him a hard time. It wasn't always fun living in a house without conveniences his neighbors and classmates took for granted.

"It was a pain," Tony Schlett says. "A royal pain."

Victory — and electricity — came in January 1985. A state appeals court said it was "arbitrary and unreasonable" for the Schletts to be forced to pay for the hydrant. The fire district could not single out a homeowner to pay for a general obligation like a hydrant. The case still gets cited in legal opinions.

Today, Tony Schlett, like his dad, is in construction. He builds houses. The son is a burly man, with a tan Carhartt jacket and a camouflage ballcap. He's 49 now, nearly the same age as his dad when the hydrant dispute began. He can't imagine his 13-year-old daughter ever agreeing to go through what he did.

Ed Schlett died in 2005. He was 77.

"It took a toll on him," Mike Schlett says.

"The worrying was no good," says Tony Schlett. "Those five, six years, you never get those back."

The sons are proud of their father. But they know the fight and the victory were not simple ones.

"I see both sides of the coin now," Tony Schlett says.

The youngest son still comes around the old house often. His brother, Mike ,and his mom, Marge, now 88, live there. The gas-powered icebox sits in the garage. The windmill works. The coal lamps are around here somewhere.

And if you look up by the main road, where Windmoor meets the old highway, you'll notice something is still not there.

Writer Todd C. Frankel seeks out hidden and overlooked stories, along with a different take on what's in the news.