On Friday morning, Mom and Dad woke to a ranch with no water. They thought that perhaps lightning from the recent severe thunderstorms had struck the house and knocked out the pump. I was on the phone with Mom on Thursday evening, and I heard the thunder!

We couldn’t get anyone to come out until 11 AM on Friday morning, so Dad ran to the store for water to hold them over until we found out what the problem was. Which got me to thinking about what it must have been like to homestead on the plains, before running to Safeway for bottled water was an option. You know, back in these times: http://www.flickr.com/photos/douglascountyhistory/2711032205/

I know that wells were generally pumped by hand back in the day, so people had water. But looking at those astoundingly barren pictures reminded me, just for a second, how tenuous our life out on the plains is.

It turns out, it was just a “relay” which apparently is easy to fix, so we were back in business by noon. So long as the well never runs dry, which is a phrase I never really connected with until now. How easy it is, to get disconnected from the source of our basic necessities.