Still, Chuck continues to post, though no one responds anymore:
June
I am living on propane and a generator in an 18 foot trailer
100 feet away from a 3-bedroom house occupied by a single person on the same property.
Have not talked with them for over a year, almost a year since they cut the power to my trailer.
Our social assistance network has not found me other accommodation, despite my efforts to rent another dwelling.
59 years old, worked since I was 19, but now on welfare.
living in a trailer in a field, no electric (unless I'm running my generator) - no running water - and yeah - no bath or shower . . .
and FOOD! - how the hell do you eat half decent without a refrigerator??
Poor Chuck, still hasn't come to grips with the fact that he did this to himself. He continues to believe that someone else is responsible for his problems and now he's waiting for someone else to solve them.
Besides, he thinks he's got problems. My creek quit running in July which was rather alarming. So me and Dee Dee hiked up one day to the source, to see if something was blocking it. She insisted on going with me because she doesn't want me hiking out on the property by myself. Some water was still trickling out from the spring but only enough to go down a little way, then it just dried up. I guess this is what happens after a really dry winter.
My well, too, seemed to be running low and I often had very little pressure After a few minutes it would quit running entirely and I'd have to wait about half an hour to get more water. Filling my outside tank took hours, where it used to fill in just 20 minutes. Fortunately, Dee Dee's water was fine so I started getting jugs of water from her.
We had frequent rain showers and my rain barrels collected enough water to keep my garden going. I grew tons of tomatoes and zucchini which I would roast in my solar oven and then freeze. My potato yield this time was 48. The turnips didn't do too well, I only got a few. I grew three nice, big winter squash.
I had bought 12 face cords of wood and spent hours stacking it outside to dry, then moving it onto my porch or into my wood shed. I had about 20 gallons of water stored in the house. Dee Dee and Ellen both took me to Northview to stock up on groceries before winter. So my pantry was full. I found a nifty little single burner stove for $10 that I felt would be handy to have. I had heard predictions that it was going to be a very harsh winter, in more ways than one. I wanted to be prepared.
One preparation was to store a lot of stuff in my barn that had been taking up room in the house. I was tired of having to stack everything on one side of the barn because of all Chuck's stuff on the other side. So one day when he was away I pulled all his crap out and piled it over by his camper. In spite of the fact that he has a shed that he built that is mostly empty, he just let the stuff lay there in the dirt.
The first snowfall came in December and dumped about two feet of heavy, wet snow. I worked at trying to clear it away for a couple of days but my progress was slow. I had to spend a lot of time working in the back so I could get to the woodshed and so the cats would have some place they could go out to. I only managed to open a foot path down to the road in the front.
As much as I hate to ask for help, I finally called Phil to see if he would be coming over with his plow. Turns out the heater in his truck had gone out so he couldn't drive it with no way to defrost the windows. On top of that, the 4-wheel drive on his ATV was also gone and he was waiting on a part. He didn't know when he'd be back on the road again.
The next morning I was at my computer and I heard a truck outside in my driveway. I thought Phil must have worked things out. But I looked out and saw the guy driving the plow truck was someone I had never seen before. I quickly called Phil and asked if he had sent someone over to help me. Nope.
Well, good grief. I got into all my outside clothes and managed to get out there just as the guy was finishing up. I caught up with him at the road and thanked him about 10 times and told him he was an angel. He told me he didn't usually just go in and plow without being asked, but he had seen me trying to cope with that mess for a couple of days and he decided he was just going to go ahead and do it. Merry Christmas!
I got to thinking about this. I had never seen the guy before. He was wearing a red jacket and had long white hair and a white beard. Oh my. It was Santa!
On Christmas day Dee Dee and I went to the nursing home where Ellen works and helped to hand out gifts. We would take the gifts to the folks and read the card and then help them to unwrap their presents. It was lots of fun, very poignant, and three hours passed by very quickly. Then we all headed over to Phil's for some snacks and Christmas cheer. It was quite a lovely day.
It snowed and snowed throughout January, but I managed to keep it shoveled out all by myself. I kept my fire going and my house toasty warm. I cook most of my meals on the wood stove, plus I always keep several gallons of water heated on top of the stove. Towards the end of the month I saw the weather forecast on the internet said it was going to clear up for a few days, and get very, very cold. Twenty below zero cold.
Fortunately I had all that stored water, so life went on pretty much as usual for a few days. Then I used the water all up and still had nothing coming from my taps. So I decided I had to make that dreaded trip to the basement to see if I could figure out what was going on.
When you're on a well you have to have a pressure tank to push the water up into your pipes. My pressure tank was only a few years old now. Chuck's supposed plumbing supplies were STILL all in the same place.
I looked at the gauge on the tank and it said 100 pounds, the maximum. Uh oh, not good. It should be about 40 pounds. What to do? Get on the internet. Soon enough I found someone to tell me where the pressure relief valve was and things I might try. So I did all that plus put down a space heater to blow on the intake pipe in case it was frozen there. Still nothing. Every other day I would fill my toboggan with jugs and pull them across the road to Dee Dee's and get more water.
One afternoon there was a knock on my door and I was surprised to see Lisa. She invited me to come over and meet Ian, a good friend of theirs who had moved from town here long ago but always came back to visit over the holidays. He knew all about Chuck and had long wanted to meet me.
“Well, I'd sure like to meet him, too, but he's going to see me at my absolute worse. I haven't had running water here for weeks so I'm kind of funky.”
“Oh, don't worry about that. Heck, he can probably even help you with whatever is wrong.”
“Sounds good to me. Give me a few minutes to brush my teeth and change and I'll be right over.”
So I met dear, sweet, cute Ian. Same age as me, divorced for many years, he now lived way over on the west coast. But he always wanted to come back to Whispering Springs, where he was born and raised. He and Jack had been best friends since childhood. I explained my water problem and he said he'd come over in the morning and look into it for me. We ate Christmas cookies and had a few drinks. Then he walked me home and we shared a big hug in the moonlight.
He came over the next day and we spent hours draining pipes, turning things off and on again, blasting the heater here and there. Finally I had running water again. Not only that, I had more water pressure than I'd had for a long, long time. I was very happy.
He told me, “No charge, this time.”
I told him that when he returned in the summer, which he said he planned to do, I would fix him a big picnic lunch. He agreed, then we went back up to Jack and Lisa's and talked and drank beer and had a pleasant afternoon. He walked me home again with one more big hug; he left the next day. I do hope I see him again.
