03/08/07 Water, water...no where

Water, Water No Where Simple things taken for granted can also be the most valued. I'm Jeff Keane. I'll be right back to see if you have guessed what simple thing I value more now. If you guessed turning on a faucet and getting water you guessed right what I appreciate more than I did three weeks ago. My wife was at a two-day out-of-town meeting, so I prepared my specialty supper  gourmet boiled hot dogs. As I started to rinse my dishes to put in the dishwasher, it happened  no water. I panicked and called my brother since the same water system supplies the ranch livestock. Well, as all rural people know, if you have a water problem, you don't have the luxury of calling the water department  you are the water department. The first thing my brother suggested was getting set up to haul water to the cattle and horses from his water supply which took some reworking since his outside water was all drained for winter. The next day we started looking for the problem, which wasn't found for two weeks. The procedure was feed the cattle in the morning with our back hoe tractor, road it six miles to the water problem, do detective work to figure the sight of the leak, dig, fail to find the leak that day and start over the next day by taking the back hoe back to the cattle to feed them. In the meantime, my wife stayed and went to work from her parent's house. As to not wear out my welcome, I ate at the in-laws, bathed at mom's place, hauled water to the livestock and slept at the dry house. Tomorrow, I'll snivel some more about not having water, trying to find the water loss and how the problem was finally found. I'm Jeff Keane.