Utter Disaster Averted

 

You drive back from the mighty DFW Metrosprawl and get to the Compound a little after noon, and what do you see? A veritable river heading down to the street by the side of the house. What? Is the AC exhaust going turbo, is there some kind of mains leak? 

Good questions, so you exfil the rig to have a recce. Sure enough, water is bubbling up outta the ground, right where the boys installed a couple of clean outs. You stare at this, entranced by the cool water flowing up to water the earth. How beautiful, but this isn't some blessed, newfound aquifer, no, it's an aquatic disaster. Just picture, if you will, the mains meter spinning out of control, as if USGOV debt. 

Problem. Solution? A neighbor drives up in his lifted Chevy, "What's up, man?" and you point to the watery adversary. He takes this in, a plumber, and says, "I'll dig that up and fix it. First I'll turn off the water at the mains with my cut off," which he did.

Some 30 or 40 minutes later we'd located a burst pipe, hose attached to PVC and split at the joint, and D produced some relevant SHARK BITE fittings, right sized PVC tube, and fixed the line. Utter disaster averted, and I asked, "How much do we owe you?" He replied, "Nothing." I shook his hand, "Appreciate you, brother," and that I do; you'll be glad to know I let him park his rigs in the church car park, gratis.

At the time of writing, this line holds. And there is a moral in this short story of country life in Texas, if you care to draw it.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

What A Mess

 

What, you say, the state of this great nation, which is apparently hellbent on going to Hell by the nearest available off ramp? No, that's a different post, I'm talking about the Compound. You see, what happened is this. I went off to visit my pal's Battle Farm in Paris Texas, all well and good, and then stayed the night in Dallas by way of filial piety. Nice, but guess what happened? It rained, and it rained mightily.

Then the rain stopped, like the Flood itself, and back we went to this bucolic slice of rural paradise in North Central Texas. Except it wasn't paradise, far from it. While I was away the church basement had flooded, wrecking the AC units cunningly stationed in its flood plain, and so had the basement in the house. In both locations our sump pumps had pathetically broken and there were the basements, awash with around three feet of water.

Worse than this, the sewer line from the Compound was partially blocked with debris, which would explain partial backups onto the kitchen floor when you run the clothes washer. Huh. Better call an electrician and a plumber, which we did.

Long story short. We pumped out the water, Electrics is looking to fix the AC and a crew of plumbers has been working pretty much around the clock to fix the sewer line. No kidding, they were here till almost midnight yesterday, digging up the line. I asked them, "I hope you're getting overtime," and they replied, "No, it's for a good cause, the Church."

Right on, and by the grace of God and sheer dint of hard work those boys cleared the line today out to the mains, some 100 feet away, and set the thing up for a dual clean out. Good work, kids, over and above the call of duty. And let's thank God for this too, the pipe in question is PVC, not clay or iron.

So that's what's been going on here in the country since Wednesday, electricians, plumbers and our ongoing war against the Weather. We shall prevail in this particular skirmish, and emerge stronger. In related news, our Beloved Rulers seem all in favor of the draft, as in "draft all the young people to fight a war."

"Why," asked my eldest, "should I fight a war for Rainbow Corporate GloboHomo and it's transnational rulers?" You see, he was thinking of getting out into a lucrative IT job, let the reader understand. I replied, quick as a flash, "You won't, you'll be part of the training cadre. Stay in and get the most out of it." He seemed to get the sense of that.

Regardless, we're approaching full water here unlike, say, Idaho. Speaking of our Rulers killing some 500,000 square acres of farmland in the Potato State, do you think they really hate us or just don't care, which is the same thing.

Cheers,

LSP