Owning a cottage apparently means you spend sweet moments sitting on your porch watching the boats and ducks on the creek... and the rest of the time trying to get the water running into your cottage.. through pipes.
The holiday weekend meant a huge family party for my cousin Lee's 50th, a BPO concert with fireworks at the downtown minor league park, moving into the downtown apartment with more hassles than anyone could have dreamed possible... and working on the water.
By Monday, Lee had no water. Ours was plentiful, but smelled like something that might remove corrosion from car batteries and spurted through the taps at a lovely red-brown opaque shade.
Reinstalling our water softener rallied the men of four nearby cottages, their tools and spare parts.
After a couple leaks and retoolings, it was time to take a dinner break. I went inside to prepare dinner and Charlie lit the old gas grill that came with the cottage. Within seconds, the connecting tubing and all plastic parts had melted completely and flames were shooting straight up from the tank.
Pans of water seemed to only feed the flame. A garden hose, brought from Georgia just days ago, and hooked up to work minutes earlier, took down the flames and prevented the propane tank from exploding.
And instead of cursing all the time and effort it took to get the water running... I was grateful.
While I could have used a less dramatic object lesson, there is a reason to sludge through the endless hassles.
And they are so much easier to face with family/neighbors who you haven't seen in decades, but help out just the same.


Copyright 2005 Judi Griggs