Modern Inconveniences

I’ve watched a lot of documentaries on ancient civilizations, so I can tell you semi-authoritatively that the Nabateans, who built Petra (made famous by Indiana Jones) in the middle of the desert, had running water in their houses. I’m pretty sure I just read recently that some other civilization, perhaps the Indus River Valley inhabitants, maybe even had flush toilets.

Well, here on Riverwalk Drive we’re not quite that civilized these days.

Yesterday — if it was just yesterday — early, I used my own flush toilet, although when I turned to the sink to wash my hands, it seemed like water pressure was lacking. Some short time later Lynn was looming over me, asking if I was awake because there was no water. As of this writing there still is no water. No Indus River flowing through this valley.

The first thing I checked was the breaker box. The well pump switch seemed fine, although I flipped it just to make sure. Then I went into the crawl space and was happy to not see any water dripping, leaking or spewing. I tried the pressure relief valve on our sediment filter, but got the tiniest of little spits.

These days, finding a plumber any time is pretty much an act of the Beyond. Saturday morning is even less of a good time than most, and the two “local” options that said 24/7 focus on the outflow rather than the input. Roto-Rooter listed a Montrose telephone number, although it did say it services Gunnison, and yes, he really calls his business The Turd Herder, and he is local and probably available, but again, more the sewer end of things.

Without calling anyone, I got out my collection of buckets that up until that very moment had seemed excessive (they keep catching my eye at Tractor Supply and while I do use them, three is generally sufficient and my collection now clocks in at eight) and started harvesting the snow that was falling. Did I mention it was snowing with near whiteout conditions on the road?

I got down the coolers and found Lynn’s five-gallon camping bucket with its spigot. I rejected her catering-sized coffee urn on the grounds (pardon me) that I don’t really care for coffee-flavored anything. I know I brought home a couple of water dispensers from Pat’s, but since I can’t find a single thing I brought home, no matter how careful I thought I was to put things I might need nearby, I didn’t even waste time looking and instead dug out Lynn’s party-size cooking pots.

Then I took everything to the Post Office, since I no longer have a business where I can go to get water. (Although, I have to say, so far that’s about the only thing I’ve missed.) The PO was in full package-sorting mode, and I just made everyone’s job harder as I trekked back and forth with my many water containers.

Then I went and ran some errands as I learned through the scientific process that the water content of the roughly one foot of snow we got over the course of last week is fairly minimal. We did get probably eight buckets of flush water out of the deal, but it was an all-day project that didn’t really seem to offer good return on investment. No wonder so many toilets use the potable water that comes into the house.

Lynn, it turns out, was thinking this is our training for the apocalypse. I, hauling the snow in, kept thinking about Laura Ingalls and her various little houses, probably mostly the one in the Big Woods. I suppose, given that some of our neighbors in the trailer park across the highway went and maybe are still going without running water, we could consider this current rather than past or future.

[I thought the state or someone made the owner of the trailer park, who wants way too much money for it, do some upgrades. The tenants were trying to buy the park, and I must confess I lost track of where that all stands these days.]

What I am finding is just how mindlessly one goes through a day using modern conveniences we (or most of we) take for granted. My fingers are sticky? Reach for the faucet. Like a drink of water? Put the cup against the refrigerator. Need to rinse out a tub because it turns out that pristine white snow really isn’t even close? Not going to happen.

I did do Lynn a favor by determining now, in my car and in our house, that her camping bucket has a crack in the bottom before she takes it on a post-Nabatean trip to some desert and runs out of water along the way. I went to Ace Hardware, where I bought another water container, a ninth bucket (mostly because it was blue, although it has come in handy these last two days) and some FlexSeal tape like the guy shouts about on TV. It is expensive tape, and although we put it all over the bottom of the camping bucket, it is still leaking onto one of the many full-size sheet trays I always wonder why Lynn keeps so many decades past her bakery ownership –until now, when we have pressed most of them into service to catch the constant drips that happen when you’re transferring snow and water without the benefit of pipes.

Somewhere in here I bothered our very kind neighbors Fred and Lisa, who are taking a “gap year” after selling their plumbing business. I didn’t want them thinking I wanted them to come fix the problem, but I wondered who they thought I should call, and Fred offered three possibilities for what the problem sounded like to him, all of them connected to the well.

So I called Williams Drilling, whose website says they don’t mind working weekends, but that must be for appointments scheduled in advance. I left a message and I was going to send an e-mail, but the form on their website wouldn’t actually let me enter any information.

We are hoping they will call tomorrow and that they can come make a diagnosis soon — and that it won’t be some obscure part that will take five weeks to get here. Because I’m not enjoying “Roughing It” as much as Mark Twain probably thinks I should.

Fred and Lisa did offer their water, and I’m sure our next-door neighbors, who use our water in the spring for trees, would be happy to share. Instead we mooched showers and a million gallons of water off our friend Sue today. No more slow-going snow-hauling for me — we’re going all-potable.

We do have a flow meter in our crawlspace that tells me we use 1,500-2,000 gallons monthly when I’m not watering the lawn, so maybe we won’t need to keep hauling water in a million gallons at a time now that we’re fully stocked with water that doesn’t have leaves and gravel chunks in it.

Nonetheless, I am already fantasizing about all the things I will do once that hopefully-very-soon day arrives when we have indoor plumbing once again. They are all things I never gave a second thought to until yesterday: pouring a glass of water, hosing off my infested tomato plants in the shower, putting me in the shower to hose off, flushing a toilet . . . when you distill it all down, wants become very basic indeed.