Hick in New York City, Part 17-- A small catastrophe!

Peanut Butter-- the holy grail

Δеν βρέ θηκαν ΆέЄ, ειс! Huh?

We used a water meter to tell how much water we had pumped, cumulatively.

Water main breaks can be spectacular!

The next morning, after a long nine hour sleep, I awoke with a renewed sense of energy, and a mission in my heart—shopping!

I needed at least one light bulb for the hotel room, before I went blind in the gloom. It was becoming quite tiresome putting on my makeup by the light of a flashlight in the bathroom. Bread. Peanut butter. Apples. A box of candy for Sally. A Laundromat to wash my coat and laundry detergent. Paper towels to dry my hands after collecting the sample, (I had asked for paper towels, but no one had brought any). Flashlight batteries. Bug spray would be nice, but probably futile. A souvenir of my stay. Gifts for my parents. Gifts for my Greek family. I had a long list of general supplies that I needed to replace or wanted to purchase. I also wanted to explore new restaurants near the well field.

The breakfast visit with the Greek family was cheerful, the old man pleased that I was, finally, beginning to 'catch on'. He kissed me on both cheeks after my blessing, cupped my face in his hand and said, "Agape, kóre!" I looked at the counterman, and he translated, "daughter." I hugged the old man, "Agape, Papa!" Then, I went back to the hotel, for another try with the girl at the front desk.

"Excuse me, ma'am," I said. "Is there any place nearby where I can shop for peanut butter?" I thought that I had better be very specific, as the word 'grocery' seemed to be a generic term no one had heard before. Surely, everyone had heard of "peanut butter". Peanut butter was a common denominator of life as I knew it. She looked at me blankly.

"Peanut butter?" I asked, slowly and clearly. "Do you know where I can buy peanut butter?"

Again, no answer. I sighed, "Ma'am, is the manager here?"

Finally, she spoke, "Δеν βρέ θηκαν ΆέЄ, ειс."

I blinked. She spoke no English? "Manager!" I said, clearly. I raised my voice, hoping it would carry to the office where the man was obviously hiding. "The manager! Is he here?"

Again, she said, ""Δеν βρέ θηκαν ΆέЄ, ειс."

Was she telling me where to get peanut butter? Was she telling me where I could put my peanut butter? Was she telling me the manager wasn't there? What was she saying? Never mind! I thought, exasperated. I shrugged my shoulders and left.

I drove to the water company office to ask Danny to arrange a time when someone could watch the wells for me for a couple of hours, and to ask Stella where to shop. It was still very early when I arrived at the water company office, but I didn't know when everyone got to work. If it was like water companies at home, they were there by 7:30 in the morning. If not, I would wait for a bit. I needed to get to the well field to relieve the night shift, but, for once, I thought, they can work for an extra half hour.

The front office door was unlocked, but Stella wasn't at her desk. The door to the inner office was locked, so I went outside to the car to wait for someone to arrive. No one came. At 8:15, I was feeling guilty about the fellows that had been there all night at the well field, so I gave up, drove to get coffee at the gas station, and on to the well field. I'll come back later, I thought.

I got to the well field, and drove past Well #1 and Well #2, up to Well #3. No one was there. I checked the measurement sheet at Well #3, and the last measurement had been at 4:30 am. Four hours ago. Where was everybody? I quickly took a set of measurements, annoyed. Three hours of data missing! I thought. After one whole week, of hauling my behunkus up those hills, every hour on the hour, with not one missed measurement, someone irksome had just abandoned their post. I can't be out here, 24 hours a day, I thought. The measurements were startling—the water levels in all three wells and the monitoring wells had taken a nose dive, and the sodium levels in Well #1 and Well #2 had shot up.

Curious, I checked the meter on the well pump. One of Fred's crews had installed a meter on the pump, so that we could tell, cumulatively, how much water had been pumped, in gallons, during the test. Every six hours, we wrote down the meter reading. The goal was to keep the well pumping steadily, at the same rate, but sometimes, variations occurred, for any number of reasons, which lead to increased drawdown in the well. Quickly calculating the total number of gallons pumped since the last reading at midnight, the well had been pumped almost 300 gallons per minute more than the rate we set for the test. That was a significant change—almost a half a million gallons per day too much. It explained the dropping water levels in the well. What was going on? I thought.

I waited for the next set of measurements, and checked the pumping rate again—still 300 gallons a minute too high. Water levels were still dropping in all the wells, and sodium levels were rising. The pipe leading to the well pump had sprung a slight leak, dripping water on the floor. I looked it over, hoping it wouldn't 'blow' in the middle of the test. That would be catastrophic! Did I really want my face to be down there next to the pipe, looking at something if it did? Nope, I stood up quickly, and left the well house, suddenly nervous.

I drove back to the water company office, and no one was there, yet. It was 9:30 am. No Stella at her desk. The inner office door locked. Something is wrong, I decided. Worried about the new leak in the discharge pipe from the well, the increased pumping rate, no one at the office, and no way to find anyone, I drove back to the well field, slowly. As I drove, I looked up and down the streets, thinking that there might be a main break somewhere. No water running in the streets, no crew frantically working, no flashing lights, no one. The streets seemed to be deserted in the rain. Of course, I had no idea where the lines were— or where to even begin to look.

Back at the well field, I opened the power box, and looked at all the buttons. Nothing was labeled, and out of about 25 buttons, one button said "On", and one said, "Off". Nothing said, "Slow Down". The coffee I had left for our guardian was untouched. Nobody here but us chickens, I thought. Nothing appeared to be wrong, other than the slowly increasing drip from the pipe and the spinning meter, but pieces of paint were beginning to flake off around the leak. Not a good sign, I thought. I put my hand on the pipe, and it seemed to be vibrating slightly, but otherwise normal—no pulsing, no feeling of bursting at the seams. All to the good, I thought. Not that I could tell doodly squat about what was happening inside a steel pipe, but if it started to look like a blasted submarine pipe, spewing like in war movies, I knew we were in real trouble!

I took the next set of measurements, and sat in the car with the engine on to warm up a bit. By now, the extra coffee was cold, so I drove down to the gas station, just to make sure I wasn't the only human left alive on Long Island. The attendant rang up the coffee, and took my money. The first day I had been there, he had grabbed the money out of my hand, and thrown my change at me. When I picked the change up off the floor, I had carefully counted it. It would have never occurred to me to count my change at home, but something about this fellow appeared to be 'furtive'— to me, at least. I always smiled, but counted my change. He grinned at me, evilly, as I counted the money.

Back at the well field, I took another round of measurements, and worried about the well. The water level was getting dangerously low. Still no guardian on the hill, and I wondered if he was all right after the ruckus of yesterday. Finally, it was almost lunch time, when a water company truck bounced up the lane. Fred got out of the truck and I reached over and opened up the passenger side door for him. "Fred!" I said. "What happened?"

"We've had a main break this morning," he said, climbing in and shutting the door with a sigh. "Not bad, but bad enough. None of the houses up here had water this morning."

"I'm sorry to hear it," I said. I knew that main breaks were bad, but it was years before I fully understood all the implications. I worked for water companies as a consultant, coming in and out to do my job—but I had a very limited view of the day-to-day operations of a water company. "I bet it happened about 4 o'clock this morning."

"How did you guess?" he asked.

"No measurements were made after 4:30 am—and the pumping rate is way too high. Fred, we've got to valve back the well or something. The sodium readings are all over the place, and the pumping level in the well is too low—the water level will be into the screen shortly." Fred grasped the significance of that immediately. If the water level in a well drops below the top of the well screen, it will shortly drop below the intake of the pump, and nothing can prevent a $30,000 pump from burning out. Not to mention that the well itself can be damaged permanently from air entering the screen. Not only that, but the increased pumping level was messing up my scientific test. I did not want to have to shut down and start all over again. Danny would have a fit! And what about the leak? I was worried.

Fred said, "Take me up there, please." We drove to Well #3, and he went into the well house. By now, the entire well house floor was covered with water; the drip had increased to a small, spurting stream. Even more paint had chipped off and flecked the floor. He looked at the data sheet— he was one of the few clients I had ever known that understood what I was trying to do, and noted the pumping rate and water level. "That's bad," he said. "Can you take me back to the truck?"

We drove back down to his truck, and he immediately got on the radio. "Someone will be here shortly with some tools," he said. We both drove back up the hill to the pumping well, and waited. In about ten minutes, Charlie roared up the lane, screeching to a halt at the well house door. He and Fred went into quick consultation, and Charlie brought out a large, heavy wrench, (over three feet long), from the bed of his truck.

"Sonnovabich rattled like a mother," Charlie said. Fred gave him a look, and he froze in mid-air. I laughed, "That's OK, Charlie, its just me!" But Charlie was subdued; I hoped not permanently. Fred and Charlie, attached the wrench to the valve where the meter was located, and, putting some muscle into it, slowly turned it one half turn. Immediately, the spurting leak slowed to a steady dripdripdripdripdrip.

I read the meter, and immediately began taking measurements every minute, to watch the water level in the well. After about fifteen minutes, I asked Fred, "Can we watch it for a bit to check the pumping rate and see if the water level gets back up to where it was? I think we're going to have to valve it down some more." We worked all afternoon, slowly adjusting the amount of water leaving the well, turning the valve back, checking the water levels in all the wells, collecting samples, and watching the pumping rate of the well. Finally, about 6 pm, we were back to about where we had started, over twelve hours before. The leak had subsided to an occasional drip, and the vibration had calmed. Whatever the problem was, we were going to have to continue to adjust the well to maintain a steady rate.

Fred and Danny had been communicating via truck radio through the afternoon. "Give him my love, please" I told Fred, who rolled his eyes at me and told Danny, "Our friend sends you her regards," which was more business-like. But, Danny had heard my comment and said, "Likewise to the darlin'." I smiled, all the same. At home, the phrase, "give him my love" was just a part of the general conversation—it indicated a close, warmhearted friendship, not an undying declaration of romantic attachment. It was an affectionate form of, "Say hey for me!" Danny would understand.

Fred and I speculated about what had caused the pumping rate to increase, during a main break. We finally decided that the loss of water in the pipes had shifted the demand between well fields, which normally would have triggered all three wells in the field to start pumping. But, with two wells down for the test, the increase in the need for water automatically went to the one pumping well. "At least now you know you can't over pump the well!" I told Fred.

Fred said it really hadn't come up before, and he would be glad not to test that theory again. We agreed that we would have to watch the pumping rate more carefully, and make sure that the night crew knew to keep track of things, as well. Danny, still at the office dealing with the fallout from the main break, was pleased that we had corrected the problem.

It was supper time, and my seemingly permanent affliction reared its ugly head-- I was hungry. "Do you want to have supper?" I asked Fred.

Without hesitation, he said, "Yes. I'm starving!"

"Let's take a break," I said. "We've been out here all afternoon, taking oodles of measurements, and the wells are still recovering a little bit. It will take awhile for everything to settle back down, so that we can get some valid data. I've gotten enough measurements today to keep me busy for a week! Is there a steak place around here?"

"A steak place?" Fred asked.

"You know, Fred, a restaurant that specializes in steak dinners. Come on, Fred—we've worked hard all day, and I think the company can spring for a steak dinner for a client!" I said.

Fred shook his head slowly, "I don't know of a restaurant that just serves steak."

"Well, even the steak places at home serve chicken and other meat, but their reputations are built on the tenderness of their steaks," I said. "How about a barbeque place? Can you get barbeque here?"

Fred looked at me as if I were suddenly speaking in tongues. "Barbeque? The Chinese restaurants have barbequed pork."

"No, that isn't what I mean," I said, thoughtfully. "Fred, I would like a piece of real meat, not ground up meat, not reconstituted meat, not meat with a lot of pasta wrapped around it, not meat smothered in vegetables and rice, just a real chunk of meat that is well-cooked and hot. Black angus would be nice. You know, Fred, a Porterhouse, a New York Strip, a nice T-bone or a Filet Mignon? Where can we get that?"

Fred shook his head, "There is only one place that serves steaks like you're talking about, but I can't let you pay for that. It would cost you $100, and that's too much."

"Okay, okay, I give. It makes sense, after all," I told him. "You're going to have to come home with me someday, just so I can buy you a Deluxe Steak Dinner for $12, and you'll know what I mean. We've probably got ten steak places in my home town, and none of the meals cost over $20. So, where do you want to go and eat?"

"Wait a minute," he said, "What makes sense?" Fred asked.

"Well, there are ten million people here, all squashed together—and that doesn't leave a lot of room for cattle grazing." I said. "At home we just have 50,000 people, and acres and acres of empty land—farm land, mostly, but no one lives on it. We get 100% corn-fed beef all the time, and think nothing of it. After all, the farmers grow their own corn, and it saves money to feed it to their cattle. You pick the restaurant, Fred. I'll be happy, as long as they serve hot food."

"We can do that," he said with a smile. "Food is just not the same, huh? You guys eat steak all the time?"

"No, we don't eat steak all the time, but about once a week, we have a nice steak dinner, if we can afford it, even if we cook it ourselves. The food here isn't the same, but it is very good!" I assured him. "Very good!" Yes, the food was very good—what there was of it. But, after a week of cold cuts, I longed for real meat. If Fred thought we ate steak all the time, would he understand about the 'starving time'?

Fred stopped and looked at me speculatively. Then he said, "I bet there are a lot of differences between New York and 'home'. Let's go eat and you can tell me about it."

He was such a good friend, to try to understand my world as I knew it—so very far from his world. Together, we had saved the pumping test, kept my job, made Danny happy. Together, we had averted a disaster—and figured out the "why" of the situation. I knew I could count on him to not be too judgmental, and to try to understand my many oddities. That, in and of itself, was a priceless gift from a friend.

Next Up: Jimmin' it!

Links

Part 14, Through the glass, darkly

Part 15, Lunch, Italian style

Part 16, A case of mistaken identity

Next Up:

Part 18, Jimmin' It!

Back To Top