The Decision Tree

Earlier today, I posted, "In a Hardly-Ever Land", a somewhat oblique reference to our morning adventure. Someone moving into the neighborhood wanted to clean the carpets in his house, but the water had not been turned on yet. He asked a neighbor if he might hook up a hose, but the neighbor said, "No". I was trying not to be too direct about what happened.

Mari was trolling through the neighborhood (actually just posting a letter in our mailbox), met the people, and heard about the dilemma, so we hooked up a fair number of hoses to prime the carpet cleaning machine. In probably less than an hour, the job was done, the new almost-resident followed the hoses to our house, and thanked us.

You might very well guess what happened next! Our water was cut off! No water! We had visions of being on a cruise ship at sea, with . . . well, you probably read the stories about what happened!

I called the city water service. "Have you no water anywhere?" "Have you turned off any valves?"

"No. No."

Oh, oh!

The nice new neighbor had unhooked the hose himself, and turned the bottom valve off, too.

You can think of it, either as evidence for, "There ain't no justice!", or as a lesson in simple logic: "If you don't allow a neighbor to get water from you, then you will not have to worry about the wrong valve being turned off."

Or, just for fun, you can go into an oblique recitation about how desert plants conserve water by having a crusty exterior.

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