Every morning after I wake up and reluctantly extract myself from a warm bed and the blissful escape of Dreamland, I always say (out loud, of course)
Jon, what the hell is going to happen next?
I've been bombarded with one unpleasant thing after another ever since I moved here.
My advice to any naive and inexperienced person who wants to move to a rural area and have a simple life:
Don't do it unless you're young, healthy, and wealthy. There's no such thing as a "simple life".
Of course, I'm far from being naive or inexperienced.
When I was young I hustled the streets of Hollywood - which quickly knocked every semblance of innocence and inexperience out of me.
Later I lived in the Missouri Ozarks and West Texas - which knocked everything else out of me.
The mega problems I had in Texas were so humongous that they make Tennessee look like an E ticket ride at Disneyland.
Does anybody remember those old E tickets at Disneyland, or am I the only one?
But where was I?
Oh yea - getting out of my Tennessee bed in the morning.
I know that you're all breathlessly (not to mention impatiently) waiting for me to get to the point, but - heck - I'm here to entertain you,
and if I get to my point too quickly it will greatly diminish the entertainment value.
For the past few months I've been having water pressure problems (in the faucets in my house). The pressure will suddenly drop drastically (usually to a paltry trickle) and stay that way for hours. Then it will (suddenly) be normal again.
I (reluctantly) learned to live with it - and attributed it to yet another delight of living in the wilderness.
Yesterday afternoon there was no water at all. Absolutely none. I was worried (not to mention annoyed) but figured I'd wait it out and see what would happen.
Sure enough, within three hours the water was back on.
I breathed a *sigh* of relief and took a short nap.
Then I got up to prepare a very late dinner.
I turned on the kitchen sink faucet. No water emerged - but
a VERY THICK brown mud oozed out.
It looked like chocolate pudding, only worse.
I panicked.
Then I called the emergency number for the water company.
After I explained the problem I had to pinpoint exactly where I live, which wasn't easy since I'm about a zillion miles from town.
The guy was extremely nice, but I experienced the same problem that I had with people in West Texas.
I don't want to sound condescending, but
I cannot understand these southern hillbilly accents. I swear to Gawd it's true and I'm not exaggerating.
(I won't mention the fact that my telephone connection isn't exactly perfect - which exasperates indecipherable southern accents)
Anyway -
he explained something about the fact that my property is situated in an odd place (as if I didn't know...) where I am located over (or perhaps under) the creaky and rusted mechanisms of a main water valve that gets clogged and periodically fills with gunk and
what the hell else, I don't know.
Before sending a maintenance team out (which would take a couple hours) he suggested that I run the kitchen tap for five minutes and then call him back.
I ran the tap for five and a half minutes and the water miraculously cleared.
I called him back.
He did his best to appease my apprehension that the water might not be safe to drink.
It'll be safe, he assured me.
Later last night - long after midnight - I made a cup of tea.
I let the water boil a long time.
After drinking the tea I was expecting to get violently ill and eventually croak.
But it's now Sunday morning. And I'm still alive.
I think.
