The Left Boot

    Last night, I was over at Nadia’s helping edit her book, when the phone rang.  It was Joan, who then told me that we had just lost our water at our house, so I hung up the phone and rushed home to see if I could somehow re-establish the water before the evening sun disappeared.  

    We get our water directly from a creek tumbling down the mountainside.  Our intake is right in the middle of a waterfall, and since we have had a lot of rain lately, plus the snow on top of the mountain is melting, it means the creek is running fast, and it is carrying a lot of debris.  I called a neighbor, who is also on our waterline, and we went up to see what the problem was and hopefully correct it.  

    The problem was that our culvert in which we catch the water, had filled up with fine gravel, thus burying our intake pipe.  First we had to divert the water so it flowed around our culvert instead of into it.  Then we lifted the watergate on the side of our culvert, and the water (and gravel) flushed out, cleaning out our culvert of gravel.

      In the process, I managed to fill my left boot full of water, but that was a small price to pay for getting our water back to our house.  When I got home I took the boot off and poured the water that filled it into the flower bed.

    It rained over night, leaving everything wet, so this morning, when it was time to take our walk through the woods, I went to get my boots.  It was then that I realized that my left boot was probably still wet inside.  The prospect of putting my foot, and nice warm sock into a wet boot was not very appealing.

    Amazingly, I then remembered that when I bought these boots, it was to replace an old pair, one of which had developed a hole in the bottom.  Being the thrifty person that I am, instead of throwing both of the old boots away, I threw the torn one away, and kept the good one, in case I would someday need it.  (The fact that I like to save old things that may someday be useful, is a sore point with my wife).  

    At any rate, it was worth a check in the garage to see if it was the old left boot that I had saved.  I figured I had a 50-50 chance that it was.  

    It was!  I put my right foot into my new dry right boot, and my left foot into my old dry left boot and we headed off into the woods.  I somehow felt vindicated for all of those hundreds of old things I have saved through the years.

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