MUDDY ROADS by Woody Legg as told to Kathleen Jarschke-Schultze We had moved into a cabin by the River whose water line ran up the mountain side. We had been told, vaguely, that if the water stopped "there are a few places up the line that you can clean out.". But we had no idea where. It immediately became imperative to find these 'few places' as the water stopped. So we started up the line, following it through the brush up the mountain, through the poison oak, up, up, and through until we came to a blackberry patch four feet high and I don't know how wide. Unable to face the prospect of beating our way through it Carol and I made our way around the patch and picked up the trail of the line on the far side and continued up. We traced the line a mile up and started back down cleaning out as we went. We came to an old wooden penstock that had rotted and blown out on one side. We knew it would have to be replaced. Down at the cabin we had found a fiberglass fish box, the kind they use on fishing boats. It fulfilled all the penstock qualities we needed. It was here, free, light, held about 70 gals. and was graded food safe. We moved it and cleaned the ditch at that point so that the water would run down the hill over the rocks and into the box. The problem was how to get the water out of the box and into the existing pipe without the water just spilling out of the box. The hole had to be far enough above the bottom of the box to let the sludge settle , but low enough from the top to still be covered with water in the summer. We had brought the fish box to the penstock area before we came up against how to get the right sized hole in the side. We didn't have a hole saw or electricity, even at the cabin. We did have a .22 rifle and Carol is a crack shot. She stood up hill to shoot down into the box and out the side, eight feet away, using shorts. She shot out the outline of a two inch hole in about 9 shots which we then connected the dots with a hacksaw blade. After applying sink gaskets and fittings it connected beautifully to the existing pipe. We went down the mountain triumphantly to wait for our water. We waited, and waited and waited some more. Finally we knew some thing was wrong so we went up to the penstock again. It was working beautifully. It was so full it was running over, plenty of water going into the pipe. We went down and waited some more. A small trickle of water started from the faucet. Knowing something else was needed we tracked the line through the dreaded blackberry patch and found our line was not the one we had followed and cleaned before. We traced our line and cleaned out the 3 traps and miracle of miracles, when we got home we had water. About 2 months later a man knocked on the door. He lived up the mountain a ways and had seen what we had done to his waterline. He was livid. He accused us of trying to stealing his water. Carol apologized and tried to explain but he would have none of it. He left in a huff. Then a week later another knock on the door brought the other man hooked into the erroneous waterline. "I see you've made some changes in my water system," he started out. Carol jumped in with an apology and explanation and promise to never touch his line again. "Whoa," He said, " I followed the line and I know you're not stealing the water. I just want to thank you for the new penstock and the work you did. In fact, I'd like to pay you for it." He pulled a fifty dollar bill from his wallet. "No, no ," we said, "It's all done now, no reason to pay us." He wanted to pay for the penstock-fishbox then. We explained that we had found the box at the cabin and thought we were repairing the cabin's water system with it. We went back and forth, him wanting to pay us and us not wanting to accept, being relieved he wasn't yelling at us. He told us he had followed the overflow from his penstock and found that it wended it's way down the hill to actually tie into our system. That was where the trickle of water had come from. He told us we were welcome to it, we had earned it. After he left we found the fifty dollar bill in the cabin where he had left it. We have been friends these many years since.