As I drove up the ramp onto Hwy. 401 near Kingston, following a talk I’d given last Saturday night, I thought I’d call my wife (on a hands-free device) and let her know I was en route home. I phoned once at 10 p.m. I tried again at 10:30 and every half hour after that. But there was no answer. I stopped calling around midnight, figuring she might have gone to bed. But when I got home, she was up. Or, actually she was down… in the basement.
“A pipe broke and has been leaking water down there all day,” she told me. “We had several inches of water in the basement.”
No wonder she hadn’t answered the phone. She’d been vacuuming up water, shovelling up saturated ceiling tiles and bagging up the soggy remains from closets, cardboard boxes and hallway shelves. She’d been coping with the mess all evening long and she was exhausted. Fortunately, she’d called a friend who’d assisted her in turning off the water, provided a power vacuum to start sucking up the water, and promised to help us find the leak in the basement pipes the next day.
But turning off the water posed a whole new set of problems we hadn’t had to deal with for a while: no water to wash hands, no water to shower or bath, and no water to drink. We clearly hadn’t planned for such a thing as a broken pipe very well.
Next morning, as it happened, I got up early to play oldtimers hockey over at the arena. I relished the 7 a.m. game all the more knowing that after the skate I could retreat to the arena dressing room and have a long hot shower. My teammates looked at me a little funny, following my shower, when I pulled out my toothpaste and toothbrush to clean my teeth. They wondered that I was taking the post-game clean up a bit too seriously.
“Busted water pipe at home,” I said. “No water.”
And I realized how helpless I was without the simple flow of water from the township water system. It made me think how foolish I am not to have bought a couple of large water containers, filled them with fresh water and stowed them for just such an unexpected situation. We are clearly extraordinarily dependent on such services and so helpless without them. But I should have learned such a lesson from a few weeks before. Remember?
I think it was a weeknight, about 9 or 10 p.m. when suddenly the lights went out. They stayed out for the rest of the night and into the early morning, as I recall. And I do remember, when I rose very early that day (not when my electric radio came on, but thanks to my smart phone battery-powered alarm) that we had to grope around in the pre-dawn darkness for washcloths in darkened showers, toothbrushes (again) and shaves by candlelight. How romantic. Not. Again, I felt as if I’d been caught completely off guard and unprepared. Indeed, I was.
But what am I supposed to do? Rush off and buy a gas generator? Or stock up on an endless supply of flashlight and radio batteries? I’ve always felt uncomfortable watching people in those hurricane states down in the southern U.S., running around scooping up cases of bottled water, hording everyday food staples and buying gas generators just to be able to power their food freezers, house lights and entertainment centres.
It always looks as if those people are doomsday, conspiracy theorists preparing for the inevitable Armageddon in a survival of the fittest Hollywood disaster movie. Those scenes of empty grocery shelves because of hording or fights in the lineups at gas stations have always spooked me. That doesn’t seem the civilized way to cope with shortages, I don’t think.
Still, there is that ounce of prevention I suppose I ought to consider.
Whether it’s the doomsday scenario types or the hurricane horders, I guess a modicum of preparedness is appropriate given the experiences of the past few weeks. I could have put aside a bit of fresh water to help us get through our pipe burst last weekend. And I could have stocked up on a few more candles and flashlight batteries for the overnight power failure a few weeks ago.
Being prepared is hardly hording or expecting the end of the world. So, I guess we’ll have to do a bit more planning around here for the possibility of another busted pipe or overnight power failure. And for me, preparedness probably means one other important precaution.
A winter of possible electrical shortages means I may have to come up with a stopgap measure in case I have to write a winter Barris Beat without the luxury of a laptop. It may be time to dust off the old Underwood typewriter, just in case.