Close call at Falling Downs

Preem Doug was in the ‘hood today, lending the prestige of his office to the Wiarton Willie Festival. That’s a scam cooked up by a few locals as an excuse for a good piss-up in the middle of winter. Not that we really need excuses around here.

Willie’s big day dawned for me at 6 a.m. when the sputtering and coughing and clanking of the water-pipes roused me out of a deep slumber… it took a moment to register what was going on, and suddenly I sat bolt upright… OH MY GOD THE PIPES ARE FROZE!!!

We’ve taken some pains to avoid such a situation after a close call last winter, but I didn’t see any particular threat when I turned in last night. After all, the temp wasn’t supposed to drop any lower than -15, and we’d had days of -20 before last year’s scare. As a precaution we’d left a tap running, on the theory that running water can’t freeze.

But there’s no water coming out any taps anywhere. Getting a plumber in on the weekend is gonna cost double what it costs during the week, and that’s pretty much an arm and a leg, and that’s if you can even find one.

I hustled downstairs and fired up a kerosene heater by the water tank in the basement. Then I began my trouble-shooting.

Longish story short, after two trips into town to visit the hardware store, and a survey of relevant YouTube DIY vids, by one o’clock we had running water again!

Whew!

I don’t understand why more kids aren’t going into the trades. What I did in six or seven hours would have taken a professional an hour and a half, max, and they would have walked away with three or four hundred bucks, easy. That’s if they were honest. They could easily have done a lot of unnecessary stuff and dinged me for a couple thousand, and I’d have been none the wiser. After all, you need your water!

But no, kids take bullshit degrees, run up tens of thousands in student loans, and then find themselves working in fast food. Go figure!

As for Doug and Willie, I assume the locals gave Doug a warm Bruce County welcome. He was up here with one of the local PC guys (that’s “Progressive Conservative,” not Politically Correct, by the way, although progressive conservative strikes me as somewhat of an oxymoron.) Up here we generally vote for somebody who can claim a bit of farm cred. You’ll never get elected unless you’ve reached deep into a cow’s hind end and pulled out a calf.

As for Willie, he claims we’re due for an early spring. Like the politicians, Willie usually gets it wrong, but what the hell…

Willie Weekend is a damned good excuse for a party!