Living Water - Part I

There is no greater dramatic setting in the New Testament than the meeting of Christ with the wanton Samaritan woman. Surrounded by sand, the precious well is the magnet that draws the entire village to it each day. What a cross-section of adults and children there were—but no men; they had man things to do. And then the encounter: a Jew, a man, meets a Samaritan woman, the historical outcasts from Jewish society. The two alone? She labors to pull water from the vital well; he offers Himself, a different kind of Well of Water, a Well that promises “everlasting” water. No more long walks, alone, brooding over a long line of lost lovers—men who come into her life and then leave. She always has a man, but she has nothing. Now, however, a new kind of well and water.

What about us and water? The Coming Crisis may not be about oil. It may be about water. Ask the Turks, who control the upper Euphrates—and the conflicted, ever-angry Iraqis who wait downstream, not for oil, but for water. Yes, water is our life. We floated in water before our birth and as we grew, we drank it and if we were lucky, we played in it. Later, as pensive, sometimes heartbroken or inspired adolescents, we sat by, brooded over it in a way the Samaritan Woman brooded. Neruda, the great Chilean poet, draws our attention to water's own will and its persistence in being itself. It “has no direction,” he says, and while it runs, it “Takes limpid lessons from stone … and plays out the unrealized ambitions of the foam.”

The Mississippi River has its own will. The Army Corps. of Engineers have spent a hundred years trying to tame Old Man River. It says “nothing;” it meanders; it destroys dikes and catch-basins and floods tributaries who join it. Now the Red River is its Little Brother. Watch out New Orleans. SHE. Yes, let's forget the “Old Man River;” let's make her powerful and willful, full of the inexplicable beauty of a woman—all women, a species of their own, apart, but thankfully willing to cleave unto us lost men. Admit it:  without whom, Nothing. Now she wants to move east, towards Texas. 


And move she will.

Ask yourselves about the water in your life. For me, the Bishop Canal, a sluggish, starved at times, high desert run-off “crick,” as we called her. We could float her with Huck Finn handcrafted "rafts." Rafts, which we banged together with odds and ends and nails from Dicky Montoya's garage; the boards, the refuge pile from my Dad's loading dock, which was our “dock,” our point of departure, moving sideways down the lazy canal, towards Bishop Bridge, which passed Dad's business. Time to unload—walk back and start over.

Why her? Why does Bishop Canal live in my 71-year-old memory this morning in Austin, Texas? Freedom, folks. A Declaration of Freedom. On that April morning the siren went off. A big deal in a town the size of, say, Rigby, ID. Bobby Stokes and I were just five-years-old. I had seen Manzanar earlier that year—my earliest recollection. His mother drove by, a bright, funny-looking, hat askew on her head; her smile bright; her gums shining above her considerable teeth. “The War's over,” she said. "I'm driving downtown to honk the horn."

Did she mean The War? Yes, the one that brought the yellow telegram and the long ride into the howling desert and the periodic tears, “Gene killed at Bastogne. Love, Mommy.” And just a month earlier, formally marched by threat of Mary Jane's pancake turner, I had scrubbed all the swastikas off the front of the house. “Do you want Pop Rashton to throw you in jail for being a damn Nazi?" she said with conviction, eyes blazing. Pop was our only cop, a 300 pound Panda Bear, who, for some reason, always carried his Billy club. Was it to simmer down an occasional fistfight between drunken Paiutes from the reservation? Was it for show?

We grew up, the day after the war. We took on Bishop Creek. Later, at the age of four, Gene, my brother joined us, a diminutive crew reminding you, perhaps, of Lord of the Flies. But we were harmless and the world must have been harmless. With endless freedom, we explored the "apple orchards" of which Dylan Thomas speaks. “We were free and easy” in our love of trees—and of water.

Before my graduation to the “big” water of Bishop Creek, though, I remember the most important and dangerous thing that probably ever happened at the Bishop Canal—or in Bishop itself. And nobody knows. Along the Canal was the storage area and loading dock. There sat two sausage-shaped 500-gallon tanks of liquid gas. On the eve of moving to our pre-new house, which was being built, the deliveryman dumped about 400 gallons of propane in the second tank, got in his truck, and drove away. One thing, however:  the hose was still attached. Within seconds, the heavier than air propane was pouring out of the broken hose like water out of a fire hose, cascading—yes, down onto the Canal, riding on top of the water like foam on a river, heading on a circuitous route around Bishop and then out to Bishop Creek.

Our poor, hysterical truck driver was worthless. Consequently, Dad headed down the street—running—because a spark [they were common in those days when cars backfired] would literally blow Bishop off the map. Mom said that when he entered the fenced area, that “he disappeared into the dense fog of billowing gas.” Propane is heavy and rides along the surface, but when you have that much, it will begin to rise, crowding for space. Dad removed the hose and capped the pipe, returned, and sat on the couch.  He smelled of propane, the frozen gas quickly melting into liquid form, left him looking like he'd been in a rainstorm. All we could do was wait. That could have been his longest and most sincere prayer.

Nothing happened.

The lives of what could have been several hundred people were spared. It was the 40s; the only newspaper was a two-man operation owned by my Dad's fly fishing buddies.

It was never spoken of again. Anywhere.

Am I merely floating on an “Old Son” mood-wave, emotions triggered by chemicals somewhere in my brain? My friend, Steve, would say, “Yes, it's part of your wiring. Your cortex is firing. You've deliberately filtered all the dark stuff.” Dark stuff like Ralph and the choirboys and the pig's head, the roots of religion in Golding's book about "natural man." Or in this case, boys in Nature, surrendering to fear and superstition and building religion, even if it's a pig's head, swarming with flies, for hope and peace when the darkness came.

Did Bishop Creek and The Canal really mean and exist what the sweatshirt says: “Bishop in the 40s:  What America Once Was!” Or were we simply lucky, squirreling around creeks and canals, alone, while Mom was home oblivious? Or trusting? Or, did she wring her hands and ask God in her pleading, childlike Spanish-Catholic way? “Help them, my ‘chico’s,’” fervently pleading. Or was it simple pragmatics? A quiet house, a place where she handled the Mojave winds more easily with us out, gone, splashing and diving and now ready for the dreaded Seven Foot, the most feared turn in the sweet-flowing Bishop Creek. Maybe there was no wringing of hands. Maybe she simply didn't think it through the way we do now when a grandchild walks 50 feet to the neighbor's and we conjure up pedophiles and "drive-bys." Yes, today, simply "driving by" someone is no longer just taking a ride into the desert:  in the Barrios, it's death.