It was mid-February, and the daytime temperature had finally climbed into the 20-degree range the day before. The relative warmth was a relief, so I wasn’t expecting any trouble when the time came to start another day.
I rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom, where an unpleasant surprise awaited.
True, a bathroom can harbor any number of unpleasant surprises, particularly in a home with a partially potty-trained 2-year-old, but this one came as a real shock.
Midway through my toothbrushing session, the light stream of water flowing from the faucet began to waver, and unnatural gurgling sounds from somewhere beneath set an ominous tone. The gurgling, choking noise grew louder, as if some sort of monster was working its way through the water pipe.
Finally, with a few hacking coughs and a hissing wheeze, accompanied by one last fog of moisture in place of what had been the water stream, the creature expired and all fell silent.
I stood there, mind blank, mouth full of toothpaste, staring at the sink. It was dead.
It took a few moments to register, but gradually it dawned on me what had happened. There was good news and bad. On the positive side, I did not have a threatening creature in my water line. The bad news was that the unnatural noises I had heard came from what remained of the water in my home’s lines being drawn through the sink.
Now the water lines were empty, and the house was high and dry. There wouldn’t be any more water coming, because the service line from the road to the house was frozen.
It’s funny to reflect on the hierarchy of concerns that go through one’s mind at a time like that. The most pressing need, of course, was to get the toothpaste out of my mouth. That took some effort without water, but was accomplished with a revolting series of sounds not unlike those made by the late water pipe monster.
The second jolt was a realization that the toilet wouldn’t work after the holding tank drained, so the family would have to make that one flush count.
Only after that depressing revelation did the worry begin that we might be in for a long-term period of either buying gallons of water from the store or melting some of the waist-deep piles of snow outside for liquid.
Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. A simple phone call to city hall to report the problem met with a sympathetic response and assurance that help was on the way. And was it ever. Before I even had the chance to get dressed and contemplate all the complications of my new waterless existence, there was a knock at the door. The calvary had arrived.
In what must have been less than an hour, city workers had restored water service by running a garden hose from a neighbor’s house through our dryer vent and connecting it to the water meter. The pressure wasn’t great, but the prospect of slow death by dehydration was greatly diminished. Things were looking up.
Still, we were told that it was likely our service line wouldn’t be thawed out anytime soon, as there had just been an avalanche of similar calls and the situation around town was obviously much greater than one home’s inconvenience.
That we could handle, and the periodic sputtering of the water from sinks and showers didn’t seem like such a bad price to pay for some sort of service.
Just a couple of days later, however, we awoke on a Saturday morning to see the city workers back, clearing the snow from our front yard so they could dig up our service line and thaw it out. That was done in short order, and we were happy to keep our water running for the next several months to avoid a repeat freeze.
Last week’s go-ahead to shut the tap off was a welcome conclusion to the whole situation. Thanks to Annandale’s public works department for such a prompt and effective response, and for keeping the water running through a particularly tough winter.
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