Friday evening along about 1900 hours a neighbor called my wife reporting that we had a new water fountain in our front yard, but in all likelihood it was not going to make her happy. Sure enough she was right on both accounts. About six or seven feet in from the sidewalk towards our house was an impressive gusher of water. From the volume and force I was reasonably sure it was a water main break of the line that transverses across our front yard, but I had a vague fear it was not, that it might be our service line. I began to have visions of dollar bills flowing out of our bank account quicker than from the hands of a drunken sailor on his first shore leave in six months.
If I had thought a minute longer I would called the water company, but my first impulse was to call the City of Chesterfield. Being after hours, the answering service routed my wife’s call to the fire department. Fairly quickly one of Chesterfield’s finest was parked in front of our house. When I saw his spotlight playing across our front yard, I went outside. He got out of his cruiser and said to me, “What you have here is some bubbling liquid, but it is not bubbling crude, so Jed don’t pack your bags for Beverly Hills.” Well the last little bit was literary license, but it is what I would have been tempted so say if I had been the policeman. The policeman did his due diligence, making sure the massive amount of water was going down the storm drain and not causing a traffic hazard, and then bumping our problem along the proper channels of the response protocol.
The first Missouri American Water vehicle showed up in front of our house a little after 2000 hours, and they begin to evaluate the situation. My wife went out and talked to these folks who assured her it was a water main, so at that point I quit worrying about drunken sailors.
Short time later, maybe 2030, it was shock and awe time. An imposing amount of heavy equipment showed up in front of our house and they began attacking the problem. Of course we were without water for a spell, and there was an amazing amount of noise outside. However, no omelet was ever made without breaking a few proverbial eggs. And if you remember Friday night was cold, probably below freezing when all the equipment started rolling in.
They were still going after it strong and noisily when I lay on the bed for a minute, knowing I would not be able to go to bed until after they were done. I fell asleep. The absence of noise woke me up around 2300, looking outside I saw one vehicle and a couple workmen putting the finishing touches on the operation. They had repaired the break, filled in the hole they had dug with gravel, and cleaned the mud and debris from the cascade of water from our driveway, the sidewalk and the street in the front of the house. Talk about a quick, professional operation. I know they do this all the time, it is what they do, but I was still impressed on how rapidly and expertly they carried out their duties.
Kudos to Missouri American Water.
One of these days when I have nothing better to do I am going to explore how this company came to have such a mashup of a name.
And so it goes.
Yikes! But so glad they fixed it quickly.