The day my soaking turned to gushing

Opinion

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August 31, 2010

THE VIEW FROM HERE

By JIM HARDIN CNHI The Zope Gazette Tue Aug 31, 2010, 03:16 PM CDT

Rockwall County — I got one of those dreaded telephone calls while away from home on a recent Saturday night.

The good news is that the call had nothing to do with car wrecks or emergency rooms.

But the news was bad enough.

“Jim, you have a very bad water leak at home,” my neighbor told me.

You know it’s bad when the caller uses “gushing” when describing your water problem. She said water was “gushing” out of my front yard onto the street. It was flowing down the driveway and out of the yard itself.

I knew immediately that it wasn’t a broken pipe or anything major. I knew right away that I had left my soaker hose on. And it soaked for 11 or 12 hours.

My neighbors, thinking that I had a major water line break, had turned the water off at the meter. After talking to me, they turned the water off at the outside hydrant, then turned the water back on at the meter.

Problem solved. Maybe not. I have a feeling there will be another problem when I open the next edition of my water bill.

So, where am I going with this? Sometimes — like now — I don’t know.

But I do know that I’ve given wife Becky a new question for her list. Any time I come inside after doing some outside work, she’s required to ask me a series of questions: Did you turn off the lawn mower? Did you shake all the grass off your shoes? Did you lower the garage door? Did you close your car doors? Did you lock the car? And now — did you turn the water off?

Actually, Becky doesn’t fire all those questions at me. But she gently checks on me sometimes. She has some very good reasons to check on me. You see, there’s some history behind every question listed above. Some of you know the stories, but what’s important today is that you know the latest historic event — the day my soaking turned to gushing.

Out of curiosity, I called the City of Royse City’s water department to find out if there was a one-time forgiveness policy for people like me who left water turned on for a long period of time — like 11 or 12 hours.

Yes, I actually called the city and talked to Deanna. I asked if the water department had such a policy.

Deanna has a nice laugh.

She laughed, then said, “Unfortunately, no, we don‘t.”

Then, she laughed again.

I could tell Deanna was a highly trained professional. She answered every question appropriately and her laughter didn’t reach the point that it irritated me, the customer.

“Do other people do things like this?” I asked of my water accident.

“From time to time, yes,” she responded.

“Do some young people do it or is it just older people,” I asked.

Her answer to this question is really what convinced me that she is highly trained. She gave me the answer I wanted to hear.

“Some of both,” Deanna answered.

This is probably going to be a two-part column. I don’t believe that’s ever happened before. Installment No. 2 will be easy steps on how to get involved.

I’m so happy we have neighbors who cared enough to get involved and even called me to report the problem. We even had two neighbors to call. Our across-the-street neighbor also called to express her concern.

But how many people passed our house that day and saw the water gushing into the street and did absolutely nothing?

Oh well, that’s another story for another day.

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