I'm standing in the neighborhood pump house waiting for the cistern to fill. The wet cement smell is making my nose itch, but the cranky boy in the house is more difficult to bear. He missed the bus, didn't finish the homework he needed to do, and is nervous about talking to his teacher about it. I'm not just avoiding his crankiness. The shut-off valve to our thousand gallon cistern broke and we're periodically filling it then shutting it off before it overflows. I have to go pick up the new one on Wednesday morning when it comes in.
We have lived in this house for twenty years now. My least favorite thing about my house and neighborhood is the community well. No, that's not true. My least favorite thing about living here is human nature. See, we used to divide the work and cost of taking care of the well. When we first lived here, the other neighbors took care of billing us, paying the power bill, and maintaining the system. We were oblivious. Then, the main pump quit and we all met to discuss what to do. Together, while sitting in our living room with cheese and crackers on the coffee table, we decided to divide the work. That seemed fair. So Mike and I took responsibility for billing until it was time to rotate again. We also decided, as a group, that each family should pay fifteen dollars a month until we had a monetary buffer of fifteen hundred dollars for when something failed. That way, a family didn't have to face an unexpected cost of three or four hundred dollars if a line broke or a pump died. The money would be in the account.
Either Mike or I sent out monthly bills for ten years. Seldom, did more than half of the neighbors pay the bill. It bothered me since the county wanted to take over the system, and everyone fought it because that would more than double our costs. If one of our neighbors had decided not to pay the county, I'm sure they would have turned their water off, but they knew we wouldn't do that to them. I also took a sample of the water to be tested every six months. It wasn't a hard job, but it involved bleach and lots of calls when the water failed the test. We figured out that the tests only failed when it had been raining a lot and leaf mold seeped down into the well. I could smell it. It smelled like autumn leaves. The people at the testing company said we were all probably used to the leaf mold by now, but we decided to get a water cooler for our house anyway. I love my water cooler. It was funny that when we first got it, it made me feel truly wealthy. It wasn't that expensive and suddenly we all drank water instead of something else. That's a healthy choice. Nickie was only three then and he called it 'glug glug.' He still asks for water more often than juice or soda.
Eventually, I got aggravated enough that people didn't pay and convinced another neighbor to take over the job of billing. She sent out bills regularly for three months then quit. After four years of no one contributing, the account was emptied and the power company threatened her that they were going to turn the power off. No power. No pump. No water. In the meantime, there were people who had moved into the neighborhood and moved out again and never once paid for water. Now that really yanked my chain. See, there's that human nature.
Last Sunday, Adrian's mom called saying the water was off and my responsible husband, Mike, took care of it. She was having a party. Mike and I were invited to the party, but Mike was going to be busy for the next hour or two. Another of our neighbors, Clive, came down to try to help, but Mike gently shooed him off. Clive likes to try to do stuff to the pump, but he thinks he's better at mechanical things than he really is and Mike has to fix almost all of what Clive fixes. Mike is always the one that people call when the water goes off or turns brown. I get aggravated that everyone assumes that he should be responsible, as if he has nothing else important to do and they can spend his time however they want. We have another neighbor, Bill, who is good at that kind of work, but he and his wife aren't friendly neighbors. I brought a pie and a hooded towel set over when they had their baby, and his wife only opened the door a few inches to talk through it to me. She took the gifts though. No one calls Bill when the water goes out.
My parents were wrong when they taught me that people should be fair and I'm still paying the price for having that ingrained into my psyche. I get really irritated when people don't even try. Remember, I said I hate human nature? I try not to let any of the neighbors know how irritated I get when they call at dinner time or 11:30 pm, but Mike knows. If they are on the phone, I try to sound pleasant. Clive got it into his head to call Mike every time he bought a new appliance and wanted to save the twenty bucks, the cost of having the delivery guys haul it off. And he used to expect us to take care of their cats on a moments notice when they went away on vacation. Clive never asks, just tells me to send Todd up the hill. He never thanks us and it pisses me off. So, there's that human nature again.
Even though it's our water too, I'm too resentful to go help the neighbors by filling the cistern. They don't deserve it. Still, I am willing to help Mike. Mike is a good guy. He's worth helping and he's had a really hard time lately, so I freely help him. And maybe that's human nature too.
Thank you for listening, jb
We have lived in this house for twenty years now. My least favorite thing about my house and neighborhood is the community well. No, that's not true. My least favorite thing about living here is human nature. See, we used to divide the work and cost of taking care of the well. When we first lived here, the other neighbors took care of billing us, paying the power bill, and maintaining the system. We were oblivious. Then, the main pump quit and we all met to discuss what to do. Together, while sitting in our living room with cheese and crackers on the coffee table, we decided to divide the work. That seemed fair. So Mike and I took responsibility for billing until it was time to rotate again. We also decided, as a group, that each family should pay fifteen dollars a month until we had a monetary buffer of fifteen hundred dollars for when something failed. That way, a family didn't have to face an unexpected cost of three or four hundred dollars if a line broke or a pump died. The money would be in the account.
Either Mike or I sent out monthly bills for ten years. Seldom, did more than half of the neighbors pay the bill. It bothered me since the county wanted to take over the system, and everyone fought it because that would more than double our costs. If one of our neighbors had decided not to pay the county, I'm sure they would have turned their water off, but they knew we wouldn't do that to them. I also took a sample of the water to be tested every six months. It wasn't a hard job, but it involved bleach and lots of calls when the water failed the test. We figured out that the tests only failed when it had been raining a lot and leaf mold seeped down into the well. I could smell it. It smelled like autumn leaves. The people at the testing company said we were all probably used to the leaf mold by now, but we decided to get a water cooler for our house anyway. I love my water cooler. It was funny that when we first got it, it made me feel truly wealthy. It wasn't that expensive and suddenly we all drank water instead of something else. That's a healthy choice. Nickie was only three then and he called it 'glug glug.' He still asks for water more often than juice or soda.
Eventually, I got aggravated enough that people didn't pay and convinced another neighbor to take over the job of billing. She sent out bills regularly for three months then quit. After four years of no one contributing, the account was emptied and the power company threatened her that they were going to turn the power off. No power. No pump. No water. In the meantime, there were people who had moved into the neighborhood and moved out again and never once paid for water. Now that really yanked my chain. See, there's that human nature.
Last Sunday, Adrian's mom called saying the water was off and my responsible husband, Mike, took care of it. She was having a party. Mike and I were invited to the party, but Mike was going to be busy for the next hour or two. Another of our neighbors, Clive, came down to try to help, but Mike gently shooed him off. Clive likes to try to do stuff to the pump, but he thinks he's better at mechanical things than he really is and Mike has to fix almost all of what Clive fixes. Mike is always the one that people call when the water goes off or turns brown. I get aggravated that everyone assumes that he should be responsible, as if he has nothing else important to do and they can spend his time however they want. We have another neighbor, Bill, who is good at that kind of work, but he and his wife aren't friendly neighbors. I brought a pie and a hooded towel set over when they had their baby, and his wife only opened the door a few inches to talk through it to me. She took the gifts though. No one calls Bill when the water goes out.
My parents were wrong when they taught me that people should be fair and I'm still paying the price for having that ingrained into my psyche. I get really irritated when people don't even try. Remember, I said I hate human nature? I try not to let any of the neighbors know how irritated I get when they call at dinner time or 11:30 pm, but Mike knows. If they are on the phone, I try to sound pleasant. Clive got it into his head to call Mike every time he bought a new appliance and wanted to save the twenty bucks, the cost of having the delivery guys haul it off. And he used to expect us to take care of their cats on a moments notice when they went away on vacation. Clive never asks, just tells me to send Todd up the hill. He never thanks us and it pisses me off. So, there's that human nature again.
Even though it's our water too, I'm too resentful to go help the neighbors by filling the cistern. They don't deserve it. Still, I am willing to help Mike. Mike is a good guy. He's worth helping and he's had a really hard time lately, so I freely help him. And maybe that's human nature too.
Thank you for listening, jb
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