Читать книгу Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night - Lewis Grizzard - Страница 15

On Water Patrol

They were talking about those poor souls in Wheeling, West Virginia, on the news.

Residents are being urged to conserve water, the announcer said, and not to take baths or showers. P.U.

There was that million-gallon diesel oil spill that got into the Ohio River and eventually oozed its way down to Wheeling, cutting off the city’s water supply.

Most of us have never been in a shortage-of-water situation, and we figure we never will.

Turn on the faucet, there’s water. There always has been, there always will be.

But I have a different viewpoint.

I grew up in a family where water conservation was a way of life. I still cringe when I see pictures of Niagara Falls. The whole thing looks to me like somebody is wasting a lot of good water.

My family got its water from a well. I don’t know much about wells, but ours was a Corvair.

“We’re going to have to be careful with water,” my mother must have said a million times, “the well’s low.”

I always knew ahead of time when the well was getting low. When you turned on a faucet, a hissing, blowing, belching sound would emerge, followed by two or three drops of water of a distinct brown hue.

Here are my family’s water-conserving rules:

1 Never leave a faucet dripping. The penalty for failing to adhere to the first rule: My mother would yell at you, “How many times have I told you not to leave a faucet dripping? If you had lived through the Depression like I did, you would understand these things.”

2 Use the absolute minimum amount of water for your bath. My mother, on constant water patrol, would burst unannounced into the bathroom, and if the water in our tub covered your little toe, she would launch into a lecture on gas rationing during World War II.

3 Never flush the toilet more than once per use. My mother was so strict on this one, I still get a thrill out of staying in a hotel room where I can flush the toilet as many times as I please.

As a matter of fact, I have more respect and appreciation for water than anybody else I know. My background obviously is the reason for this.

Nothing makes my day like a shower with strong water pressure. A shower with a mere trickle makes me consider joining a terrorist group.

I love a cold glass of ice water the first thing in the morning. It puts out any fires still smoldering from the night before.

I love rinsing off my face with warm water after shaving. The skin tingles, the eyes open, bring on the world.

If it weren’t for water, I couldn’t make coffee in the morning, and scotch drinkers would be even more obnoxious than they already are.

If it weren’t for water, Seve Ballesteros, a foreigner, would have won the Masters golf tournament a few years ago, keeping Jack Nicklaus from his heroic and nostalgic victory.

All I’m trying to say is, we occasionally should consider just how precious water is. Wheeling, West Virginia, now knows.

Nothing like a citywide outbreak of B.O. to drive that point home.