St. Paul has great water. It’s cold, refreshing and tastes good. Reminds me of the gin-colored cold water in Lake Superior. The official title of the water department is St. Paul Regional Water Services. Fine with me, just so when I go the tap, there it is, the best water in the country.
Why, I have been remiss. The unspoken charm of our town is the water. And I have gone to the taps all over Europe and the United States, finding no equal to what awaits me at home.
So, the other day, working in Siberian conditions, the guys in yellow vests, probably gals, too, were digging down to a busted pipe in our neighborhood. You can always tell when work is being done in the winter. The streets get slushy. They make a mess. More importantly, neighbors email each other wondering about water pressure. We are immensely pleased to learn that we aren’t the only ones with no water coming out of the tap. We always want it to be the work underway, not a leak in our basements. We do the same thing during power outages.
Whatever they were doing took them most of the day. Around dinner time, signs of life appeared. Out of the taps came a hissing sound as the pipes bled air. The toilet bowls rumbled. Not long after there was water, haltingly at first, a furious sputtering, a bit discolored. Understandable. I don’t know what they encounter down there.
By later in the evening, all seemed well. Still a little air bleeding and spurting, but for all practical purposes, she was up and running. I let it run just a bit — looked clear to me — and then slogged down a big glass of urban America’s best.
The next morning, I made coffee as usual, the coldest water possible being the key to good coffee. Then I went to the dentist and returned home just in the nick of time, if you know what I mean. I was in gastrointestinal distress and there being no other way to put it, from both ends at the same time. Holy mackerel. Maybe I had been too close to a kid who was under the weather. Or maybe I just caught a bug, but holy mackerel.
“Hey,” I heard from beyond the closed door. “Did you swallow a hunk of cigar again?”
“No.”
I never think poorly of our water and was hesitant to cast any blame. Nor did I wish to start an email blast to the neighbors, not wanting to bring up the topic of any similar reports. I suffered only briefly and what came over me didn’t last more than 30 minutes and I was back to normal and remain so.
The next day, I saw one of the Regional Water Services’ dark-blue pickup trucks in a different neighborhood. I was curious. I stopped and rolled down my window, gesturing for the occupant to do the same.
“How I can I help you?” the driver said. He wore a yellow vest.
“When you guys repair a break in a pipe, how long before I should drink the water in my house?”
“I’d let it run a couple of minutes.”
“Minutes?”
“Yeah,” he said, “let the air get out of the system. The water might be a little brown.”
I interjected that it was.
“Minutes?” I asked.
“Yeah, a couple of minutes,” he said. “Then it should be fine.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“No problem,” he said, “you have a nice day.”
What a pleasant exchange. No politics. No ICE. No taxes or fraud or Siberian temperatures. No angst or litmus tests or cops or undercurrents of complaining about anything from either party. Just a guy asking a water guy what the deal was. And he said minutes.
I’ll let that be a lesson to me. It’s damn good water, but best to let it breathe.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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