An inanimate, flexible, hallow rubber object does what it wants when you want it to do something else. I have been confounded by garden hoses probably ever since I was eight years old and was helping my father water the lawn.
It's not because it's Father's Day that I mention my father. It's because last night the hose in front turned itself on. But more on that in a bit.
Growing up in the house in Flushing there were no outside spigots to attach a hose. I don't remember any houses on the block that did. It wasn't until sometime in my thirties that we added a spigot on each side of the house.
Until then, my memory is that we attached a hose to the spigot in the cellar by the enormous porcelain tubs that were there to take the discharge from the washing machine, a dangerous looking contraption that had the rollers on the top so that water could be squeezed out of the wash and it could then be hung on the line outside merely damp, not dripping. No one I know lost a hand to the washing machine, but the potential for an accident was there every time a towel was fed through the rollers.
The homes of that era were once heated with coal, and the hatch window on the driveway side could be flipped out to accept the coal chute, that went into the coal bin. Some homes still had the coal bin in use for a workshop. I still remember one house in the neighborhood that was serviced by a coal truck. Everyone else had converted to oil or gas.
My memory predates coal heating, but my father would tell of me when he and my mom shoveled coal into the burner. Apparently, we weren't advanced enough to have a "automatic fireman" feed that would deliver the coal without so much manual effort. I still have a few of the coal shovels in the shed. They were used to shovel snow. Memories.
A hose just being a flexible line wouldn't seem capable of knotting itself. Or developing a kink that pinches off the flow of water. But there never seemed to be a time in stringing that hose to either the front or the back that it didn't someone knot itself, or got caught on something and require a retracing of steps. Nothing ever went smoothly.
Eventually, with outside spigots things got a little better, but there was still the occasion of a snag. A hose has a mind of its own.
Forward to the present dwelling with outside spigot and hose reel for the back, and hose holder for the front, and you would think nothing will ever delay you. Wrong.
The y-connector allows for two hoses to be attached to the spigot, and toggle tabs allow for separate on/off operation.
Even with a hose reel, in the back, pulling the hose across the patio still results in the kink, or tangle with a piece of furniture. Since there are sprinklers in the front, there is less need to use the front hose.
Even though it is recommended that when not in use you should turn the water supply off to the hoses, I've taken to leaving it on. The connections are tight enough that there is no dripping, even tiny. And we're always home, so if something happens, then water can be turned off.
The front hose is wrapped around a simple wall-mounted holder that is behind the shrubs. The nozzle is a typical lever handled nozzle, is one of those Dram models that allows you to create specialized flows by rotating the front wheel.
Since the water is always on, using the hose is simple. You unwind it, and press the nozzle. The human side of this is that it takes someone to press the nozzle to make water come out. Unless something else happens. And apparently that something else happened Saturday night, early Sunday morning.
At 2 A.M. trip to the bathroom for bladder relief.it became apparent to the ears that water was running somewhere. Upstairs toilet? No. Downstairs toilet? No. Dishwasher, washing machine? No. Following the sound leads to explore what's going on outside the front door. Sound is louder, pavement is wet, but where is the water coming from?
Check the front spigot, but no leaks at the y-connector. Then, the source is identified. The front hose and nozzle has somehow partially slipped off the holder, bounced the nozzle on the pavement, with the weight of the nozzle pressing down on the handle. A spray of water is squirting up, saturating the front door and pavement. The hose has somehow turned itself on.
Easy solution. Turn the spigot off. Problem identified, and solved. But how did the hose turn itself on in the first place?
Turns out on Sunday morning after my wife woke up, she told me about the water being on, spraying the front door, and her going out to turn off the spigot. I then told told her I turned the spigot off at 2:00 A.M. Apparently she didn't turn it off tight enough, and there was still water coming out of the nozzle.
The hose obeyed one of Newton's law of motion: a body in motion tends to stay in motion. When I used the hose on Saturday I must not have draped the nozzle in a 4, or 5 o'clock position. I must have left it high on the top, 12 o'clock, and the nozzle inched its way down, hit the pavement and turned itself on.
Which of course creates the other law of garden hoses: they have a mind of their own.
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We had the last coal furnace on our street - the neighbors loved our ashes when the snow fell. My mother's code was "If the B MT put:" translation "If the grate be empty, put coal on"
ReplyDeleteNYC was once composed of three independent subway lines. One was the BMT, Brooklyn, Manhattan Transit. They were all merged long ago, but exist with different track gauges.
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