And then it was dry
a Valentine's Day to forget
Tom was watering the winter garden. There isn’t much left down there, but there are onions and garlic, collards and turnips. I was doing laundry. We’re very parsimonious, so I was filling the washer by hand. And the water just stopped. I figured that Tom was running the hose full blast and the pump just had to catch up, so, rather than waiting for it to catch up, I shut off the washer and went into the kitchen to start dinner.
An hour or so later, I went back to laundry joy, but there was still no water. Tom was still in the garden. All I could think of was mud wasps in the switch or something brilliant. I rallied the troop and we checked out all the bits and pieces that make up a well. Everything looked fine. But there was no water.
Home Depot carries everything we need, or so we thought. We picked up a new control box, new switch, blah blah…and went to work changing out the works. When we hit the breaker, boom went the capacitor. Oh Ha. Oh ha ha haaaa. The pump had to be fried.
Of course the company that replaced the pump a couple of years ago informed us that the pump had a 1 year warranty. That was helpful. But, they hooked us up with a company that could pull the pump and reset a new one. So, we bought a new pump.
They came. They pulled. They ran about a million bucks worth of pump wire, they dropped the pump into the casing. We were so excited. Ten minutes from having water again. Oh ha ha ha ha ha. The pump hit sand 10 feet short. The well guys thought that it was because the last pump repairer had fitted the line with a torque restrictor, and it was at the absolute minimum clearance, but maybe it had been scuffed up enough to stop progress.
Up came the pump again. They cut off the restrictor. They dropped the line back into the casing. Ten feet short again. They lifted it and dropped it and lifted it and dropped it and finally we turned on the pump and out shot water with a lot of karst. Duh okay. The casing was broken, and the well had collapsed. The pump guys weren’t well drillers. Hey, there are specialists in all the trades. But they gave us a referral to a company that wouldn’t rook us.
We called them. They called us. It would be a while. Go buy a bigger tank. Okay. We bought a new big tank. We called other drillers with good references. Prices were all over the place. Some just wouldn’t consider working with components we had bought unless we wanted to pay a premium.
You know, we’re on Social Security. We raise our food. We don’t travel. We don’t buy anything. We scrape by so we can pay our taxes every year. I’m a painter, and I could write a book about the fun (pfffft) of selling art. We’re musicians, and we are also old. It’s been harder and harder to get a gig. I’ve been having health problems and had just received notification that it seemed that I owed the hospital . As if. And now this. The new well could be $8 - 10,000. I don’t know about you, but that just wasn’t what my cardiovascular system could stand.
We are musicians, and figured, okay, we need water. We don’t have money, but we do have instrument acquisition disorder, and all of the money we HAD made was invested in gorgeous instruments. So we put guitars, amps, a fiddle, a mandolin, a hammered dulcimer, and my beautiful cello all up for sale. Of course no one wanted to pay for these instruments. These instruments had paid our bills for years, we love them, we play them every day, and no one wanted to pay actual money for them. Oh, if I put them out on the lawn, sure, they’d be happy to come pick them up. But pay even a fraction of their value? You have to be kidding.
One friend kept saying, “Set up a Go Fund Me!” So I did. I’ve posted it everywhere. Old friends helped. Folks from the music community helped. Our kids helped. Tom’s family helped. Even people I don’t know threw in a few bucks to help. We’re getting there. But, I’m posting it here, because we aren’t there yet. I don’t need advice, or being told to take out a loan, I need cash to get the water flowing again. Every cent helps. One dollar will bring us that much closer to being able to pay for the well. Thanks for reading this. That’s something. See ya later, bye! wave wave
Here’s the link, if you can afford a donation. Subscribe to this newsletter if you don’t want to contribute to the fund. Share this post if you can’t do either. Thank you.
Here’s the GoFundMe link: