CATCHING UP WATER

With all the dire weathercasts for us, then not us, then everybody maybe---I do note the prophesied nine days of Below Tens that show for our future.   And I've done quite an odd thing---age-old thing, and certainly quite familiar to our Deep South days in the fickle HOTTTT  Delta-that-got-ICE STORMS. 

I Caught Up Water.   That's what you called it, if a pump had a problem or you feared for the pipes---sure as the schoolbuses rolled for the first two snowflakes past a window, the whole populace seemed to break out the Colemans and buckets and pans and CATCH UP a reasonable amount.   I had bought five new food-grade clear 16-gallon tubs with snap lids for all the cleanup and extra storage after the Summer House-Wiring Fiasco, and I just now filled one upstairs and one down, just in case.   And OHHH, the Memories flooded in.

We shared a pump on the farm---four houses of us, all kin, and at one time there, we had five generations right there around one big lawn.   My first Mother-in-Law was an Angel on this Earth, and Taking Care was her middle name.   She was stringently dedicated to all the "power" supplies---the electricity, the big silver gas tanks which sat beside each house, and our wonderful water----hundreds-of-feet-deep icy fresh water, serving us all, with ONE Golden Rule:   When the thermometer was to reach 33 in the night, the pump power was turned off to prevent any kind of mishap with frozen pipes at any house, or at the pump itself.

And she turned it off herself and drained it.   Every time.  At six o'clock on those nights, you could see her out there in the floodlight, robe flying and house-shoes planted in the gravel, getting that thing all safe for another cold night.   She just didn't trust it if she couldn't see it, so she drained it and clicked that switch.   And since they'd had their suppers and baths before six most nights in the Big House, we of the other houses had to scramble through homework and hot water levels and whose-turn-is-it right about the time our Lasagna came out of the oven, or the dishes were half washed.  I love a morning bath, but six-thirty school buses wait for no one to bathe.   

Some awkward and unnecessary hurry-ups in those days, but we wouldn't take anything for the snug, comforting reliance on everything running smoothly because Ma had things in hand.   I hit the Family Lottery with that one.  She also called me every time there was a thunderstorm, to turn off the stove, because "heat draws Lightning."   And such were the tiny quirks and sayings that made her the beloved Grandmother fondly remembered and with three generations already named after her.  

And the story of the Ice Storm when four neighbors appeared at our door with a "Can you take us in?" and stayed six days, with our guys going back to their house to their only building with a warm bathroom to shower at night, picking up barrels of water for all our group, and we ladies going to Aunt's house by twos, and all of us nine sleeping cozily SOMEWHERE in that crowded house.

And the Great Mystery of how OUR house was the only one on that country road that the lights stayed on.   We could SEE the drooping cables and downed power-poles all the way to Clarksdale, and all our family around us was living by lamplight, but our LIGHTS DID NOT GO OUT.   I was even catering a wedding that weekend, with all the company in the house.    Those are stories for another time.