When it Rains, it Deluges

Why don't we Thevictorians change our family name to Morton, and move into a giant blue cylindrical box?

That's a rhetorical question. Not a riddle. Not survey. Not a contest.

Perhaps you've heard about my unfortunate hospitalization last Friday for multiple bilateral pulmonary embolisms. If not, remind me sometime and I'll tell you about it. During that interlude, Hick backed T-Hoe out of the garage and broke off the passenger mirror. Genius came home this Friday, because the brakes on his truck don't stop him. In addition, his truck radio went kaput. Oh, and last night, while sitting in my dark basement lair chatting with my best old ex-teaching buddy, Mabel...I heard a giant POP!

The noise sounded like it came from Hick's basement workshop, on the other side of my office wall. Hick came down and combed the room to see what the hubbub was about. Of course he found nothing. The air conditioner was still cooling. The electricity was still powering my New Delly and the big-screen TV. Mabel was still conversing in my ear. All was right with the Thevictorian world. Or was it?

At 9:45, The Pony forsook me at the end of Cutthroat Kitchen to go upstairs for his nightly shower. I heard him turn on the shower. It's right above my head when I sit in my blue basement recliner. Then I heard a heated exchange between The Pony and Hick. Um. The Pony does not have heated exchanges. So I listened closer. It was more of an excited exchange. Something was wrong with the shower. As in, the shower was not showering The Pony with water.

Hick came tromping downstairs. In his tighty whities, but thankfully not in my navy blue Crocs like I caught him last week. He entered the workroom and started rummaging. Came out with a Bible-sized hunk of hardware that included a black cylinder with the top flapping, wires, circuits, thingamajigs and dealybobbers. "It's the well. The capacitor blew. We have no water. Tomorrow, when the drilling companies open, I'll swing by and see if they have a capacitor. I'll put it in and see if we get water. If not, I'm going to have to call a driller out here to replace the well pump. That will be about $1000. The capacitor is about $5. We'll get our water back."

I needed to go to work today to finish up grades and check out for the summer. I wasn't supposed to, but I needed to. I planned to spend two hours there, with The Pony doing my heavy lifting. The thought of heading off without a shower or shampoo was not appealing. Thank goodness my knight in tarnished auction armor found a kit to fix that part for $80. He rushed home mid-morning and had water pumping before I even left for work. He rocks.

"I saw the neighbor out in his yard when I left for work at 6:00. He had a capacitor, but it was not big enough for our well. He said he always keeps a spare. It fits his and the neighbor's up the road. He says he's changed his five or six times. I could have ordered just the capacitor, but we would have had to wait to get our water back. And that might not even have been it. So I just bought the whole kit. Now I'll order a spare capacitor to have on hand."

Yes, Thevictorian is the new Morton. A pair of lungs that work clotfree? Arm-and-a-leg. A Tahoe folding side mirror? Three hundred dollars from a dealer. Brakes for a Ford Ranger? Seventy dollars in parts and free Hick labor. Radio for a Ford Ranger? Ten dollars at a junkyard. Capacitor for a well pump? Eighty dollars in a hurry.

My resident fix-it man Hick? PRICELESS!