| In an upcoming story I will relate how cold it was in our farmhouse every winter throughout our growing up years. Our house was ALWAYS cold as a result of our heating system, which consisted of 2 fuel oil burning stoves downstairs and only 1 upstairs. Tim and I had to haul in fuel oil for the 3 stoves every night during the heating season to fill the stove fuel tanks. The fuel oil was stored in a big red tank in the woodshed and it had a crank pump on the top which we cranked to fill a one gallon red fuel can with a rubber hose on it. We had to make several trips to fill all the stoves. Why we didn't have either a bigger can or even 2 one gallon cans to save trips, elludes me now that I look back! Unknown to us, over the years the big red fuel oil storage tank developed a slow leak in the bottom and eventually fuel oil leeched down into our well which was located about 30 feet from the tank. After a while, our house water supply started to smell and taste like fuel oil! It seemed we had it in the water for years and I don't recall what the "grownups" did to immediately solve the problem. However, it did eventually clear up either as a result of the tank being replaced or us having become so used to the water that it seemed fine eventually. We never gave any thought to the possible long term health effects of using fuel oil tainted water for drinking, bathing, and cooking, we just "lived with it"! I guess all of us were really "laid back" in those days and didn't "sweat the small stuff"! My goodness! We didn't even "sweat the BIG stuff" either! (In the future, I'll relate more stories to illustrate the former and latter point). Both Tim, Sue, and I have no apparent health problems some 35 + years later, accept this may explain our "volatile" childhoods as the previous stories attest to! The only problems we have now, which we attribute to middle-age, is that our energy levels seemed to have "run out of fuel". Maybe we just need a good stiff shot of fuel oil to get us "started" again! As a matter of fact, I'm considering instead of going to the doctor's office for my middle-aged maladies, maybe I should stop at a local truck stop! This may not only "refuel" my energy, but maybe I can get my leaky "hose" fixed and improve my "idle" time, not to mention easing my "load" and lubing my creaky "joints" and getting my suspension "stiffened" and hopfully some "tire" work so I can get "started" better in the mornings! Hey, I do feel like a "semi" invalid sometimes! Hmmm, maybe I will, you just never know! What have I got to lose? The fuel oil refill sure isn't apparently going to harm me any! You just never know... |
