No water

When we returned home yesterday morning (Sunday, May 31, 2009) from running at the so-called elitist country-club, our water was off.
This meant no cleaning off the dog, and no shower.
No warning or indication this would happen.
I did notice town workers cranking a shut-off valve, and a crew was up the street with a backhoe.
Our water system out here is municipal, but hardly the vast layout like in Rochester.
Part of the reason we bought this land is because it had water and gas, scotching propane and a well.
But it’s not a giant area-wide water authority, and I don’t think it would support heavy development.
Water to the hydrants is the same as what comes through our tap, which is really great water; the same stuff pumped to Rochester.
It isn’t purified Canandaigua lake water, a lake that gets agricultural runoff, sewerage overflow, and outboard motor spillage.
The standard joke is how ill-prepared we are for Armageddon.
No water equals no water.
Hand-washing had to be done with water I had put in a pan to thaw supper.
This is unlike Linda’s mother, who is ready for the complete collapse of the world’s infrastructure.
Another standard joke is who gets Dorothea’s giant stash of canned goods when she dies.
“We don’t want it,” we’ll say. “We don’t want it,” Linda’s brother will say. “We don’t want it,” our niece Debbie will say.
Enough Campbell’s Creme-of-Mushroom to last an entire century.
During the late ‘50s, shortly after our family moved to northern Delaware, we were under threat of nuclear attack by the Ruskies; and were encouraged by the powers-that-be to put aside a survival stash.
My father dutifully set up a stash in the sandy crawl-space under the living-room of our house in Oak Lane Manor, and part of it was glass gallon water-bottles, filled with standing water.
It was putrid and offensive. Survive nuclear Armageddon on that stuff? GET REAL!
Thankfully, nuclear Armageddon never occurred, and we weren’t forced to survive on that stuff, which probably would have poisoned us.
I remember viewing a nuclear Armageddon movie, that depicted people getting vaporized by the nuclear fireball.
With nuclear Armageddon, all bets were off.
Sleeping was near impossible with nearby Haddonfield testing its air-raid sirens. What if what I heard was real? —I was always listening.

“The so-called elitist country-club” is nearby Boughton (“BOW-tin” as in “ow”) Park, where I run and we walk our dog. It was called that long ago by an editor at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked, because it will only allow taxpayers of the three towns that own it to use it. We are residents of one of those towns.

“Linda” is my wife of 41+ years. Her 93-year-old mother (“Dorothea;” “Dar [as is “are”]-oh-THEE-yuh”) lives in a retirement community in De Land, FL.

“Ruskies” equals Russians.

Our family lived in the northern Delaware suburban development of “Oak Lane Manor.” Prior to that, our family lived Erlton, a suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey. It was adjacent to “Haddonfield,” an old Revolutionary town. We lived in Erlton until I was 13. (“Erlton” [‘EARL-tin’] was founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl. Erlton was north of Haddonfield.)