| Not exactly Old Faithful |
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| Local Content - Staff Blogs |
| Written by production |
| Wednesday, 17 February 2010 18:44 |
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There are some things in life that you take for granted until they go south on you, and then it is time to panic. For example, growing up there was only a few things I really wanted to have as an adult. Running hot and cold water, a furnace with a thermostat and a flush toilet. When my Uncle Bill first bought a farm near Prairie River, Saskatchewan, our idea of running water was running down to the stream and filling buckets. You know, I remember that water being sweet and cold with the spring hiding amongst a copse of poplar trees and a great bank of lush green moss. I’d lay on that moss and drink deep before filling buckets. Now I have to have my water filtrated, chlorinated and purified. Yet it used to taste better... I don’t get it. Anyway, that is off topic. I hated filling buckets after a while. I especially hated busting a hole in the ice in the darned winter and filling buckets. Getting wet armpit deep during a Saskatchewan winter is not my idea of a good time. After that we lived in a house with running cold water which meant boiling buckets of water for a shower (a plastic pailish thing that hangs upside down with a spout). When you do this the water is never the right temperature and there is never enough of it. I hated that too. Ever since I was old enough to make my own decisions my houses have had hot and cold running water. Growing up we usually had wood stoves. This meant you had to take extra care not to be the first one out of bed on a winter morning. Why? Because by then the fire was only a couple of coals and you’d have to get it back to flames, feeding it kindling and wood until it was burning nice and hot. You usually did this while hopping from one foot to the other and blowing on your own fingertips. And heaven help you if the wood bin was empty - that meant a trip outside to gather wood. I hate hate hate gathering wood on a winter’s morning. As an adult, I have always had a nice furnace in my house. As for a toilet, not to be indelicate but as a kid we grew up with a luxurious two-seater with a crescent moon carved in the doorway. In the summer it smelled terrible even after a good lye-in. In the winter - well, lets just say no one bothered to take a newspaper or a book outside with them cause time was definitely of the essence. Now I have a nice flush toilet with plenty of reading material available... okay, you probably could have lived without knowing that, but I’m just saying. The only problem is that our flush toilet recently turned on us. Now, some of you more delicate readers may want to stop reading right now because a few weeks ago we had a blockage problem and I am going to tell you all about it (see, that was a disclaimer). Since Clayton is gone, I actually have a plunger (for those of you who don’t know, my brother Clayton is an infamous borrower and when he was living here I never had custody of my plunger, my hammer, my screwdriver, my Lord of the Rings DVD set... the list goes on). Anyway, dad utilized said plunger quite enthusiastically apparently - but the blockage was located somewhere north of the place where the toilet line hooks to the shower line and - you guessed it - the shower acted like a geyser and everything he forced down with that mighty plunge came right back up, shooting with impressive force straight towards the ceiling. He came out of the bathroom a far less happy man than when he went in. Of course, my son, Dallas, thought the problem wasn’t where the blockage was located, but rather the lack of strength in the plunge affected by his poor aged grandfather. He took matters into his own hands, as it were, headed into the washroom holding the plunger like a logger holds his ax and gave it a try. When he came out he headed straight to the laundry room and threw his clothes in the washer. Then, after dressing, he went and bought some extra strength plug dissolver at the hardware store. Meanwhile dad sat at the kitchen table telling mom about the good old days and how you never had to plunge the luxury two seater with the nifty crescent moon decorated door. Such is life in the Pilon household. |