Standing there holding tools
Memories of frozen shutoffs stop flow of self-pity
Whenever I feel sorry for myself because I can't have a shower, because of a power outage or maybe because of a foot of hair clogging a pipe halfway between here and the street, I think about when I'd be standing with my grandfather in the backyard, a hundred years ago, in the dead of night, on top of three feet of snow, on top of four feet of frozen dirt, on top of the “shut-off.”
It was the worst thing in the world. In those days in the company house, in midJanuary, if somebody forgot to leave the tap running just a trickle overnight, the pipes would freeze, sometimes bust, or the water “shut-off” would freeze.
My grandfather would turn white whenever he got wind of this, especially after coming home for a hard shift in the pit. He'd become absolutely apoplectic. Too wild to even speak. My grandmother would send him back out and she'd send me outside with him, to fix it.
Me? What was I going to do?
I was sent out for moral support. I went out so he wouldn't wake the neighbours with resounding bad language, promises of leaving town, the pit, the neighbourhood, and giving the wrong picture of a usually pretty nice guy.
To this day, I have never really seen a “shut-off.” All I know is that it lay buried underground and when it was reached, it had to be thawed with a blow torch and wrapped in swaddling clothes. Insulated so that this kind of thing, like war, would never happen again!
I could do nothing but shuffle from foot to foot, as frozen as a bag of peas, and pass my grandfather things that he could have easily kept right next to him on the ground.
At least he was doing something; in fact, steam rose up from the hole the further down he got. Me, I was an OR nurse in a MASH unit, -20 F, standing there, throwing him surgical tools as he descended further into the abyss. “Pick!” “Pick.” “Axe!” “Axe.” “Shovel!” “Shovel.” “Not the snow shovel! The pan shovel!” “All you said was shovel!” “Bah, you should know these things by now! You're almost six years old!”
I don't know how but he knew exactly where to dig. There was nothing to mark the spot. No flag. No stick. No X. He was like a fox standing in the snow, staring, staring, listening, and then leaping high into the air and diving nose first into the bank and coming up with a lemming. He had the powers of a divining stick. He just knew.
I can still feel how cold my toes were, and then my whole body, every molecule suffering a magnitude 6.7 earthquake. While he was digging and picking and chopping, all in a lather of sweat and stifled profanity.
If I'd known anything about showers, I really would have begun to feel sorry for myself at that point. We only had the bath, which was too much work, not to mention out of the question.
“A bath! On Tuesday! What do you think this is, a spa?” No, you had to go to the pit for a shower. Which happened maybe once a year.
The Boozans down the street might have had a shower. They had a lawn, a picture window, a colour TV, a paved driveway.
If I thought the Boozans had a shower, I would have knocked on their door. Told them ma sent me. Thinking she was going to get one of those things for my grandfather for Christmas. Would they mind if I had a test drive? Anyway.
If we'd had a shower and the shut-off froze, it would only be all the more heartbreaking, because we'd have become soft already. Which I am now.
And loving it.