Hoses have changed a lot in my short (relatively short…cam’ on!) lifetime, the first ones I remember issuing out a soft spray of ridiculously cold water onto my short bare legs and goose-pimply thighs as I ran back and forth across a lawn (I don’t remember whose lawn, but not ours. We didn’t have one) on a hot summer day. I was probably five or six the last time I did that, but wish it had been more often.
At this same time during my preschool days my mother had a vacuum whose hose practically had a life of its own. She would set up her cleaning machine on the Persian rug (the rug was so beautiful, and clean) and let the thing stand, its long, sturdy hose managing the cumbersome vacuum with ease. I would watch this with awe, thinking my mother’s vacuum the eighth wonder of the man-made world. Fast forward three decades or so (cam’ on!) and the vacuum/hose I have now has more duct tape holding it together than it has hose, and the dirt doesn’t suck up the way it used to at all.
Later, when I was aged seven to twelve and living (now there’s a euphemism) at Dorothy and my father’s, hoses came in two forms: as an item you used to spray dirty dishes with – quite a luxury in those days – and as the thing Dorothy engineered while rinsing her customers’ hair, usually with blistering-hot water, in her hairdressing shop.
When I was a teenager, hoses meant something even more inflammatory (although I am not qualified to know the exact difference or to rate that difference). Hoses symbolized gay men, beaten up by Toronto policemen, in the obscurity of night-time Queen’s Park. This happened to, among many, a friend of mine as he cruised home from The Quest, and I know – everyone in the city knew – that this sort of brutality went on. Rubber hoses hurt, but they do not bruise in the same way that lead pipes bruise. And it’s always better to hide the evidence anyway, yes.
Close to this very same time, when I was eighteen or nineteen, I had a new hose experience that involved this same friend. I had been invited by his family for Christmas (an invitation that was especially welcoming that year, as I had just been uninvited the day before by my father, who was travelling to Peterborough for the holiday and whose wife had decided last minute that they didn’t have room for me in the car. And I was skinny.) (Sound familiar, Gaspar?)
Anyway, I have told this hose story about a hundred times, and I hope it is worth repeating: I was taking a quick bath that Christmas morning (the living room, which adjoined the bathroom, rocked with the happy sounds of mellifluous merry-makers) when my friend accidentally opened the bathroom door. I shrieked, of course, all modesty prevailing, and shuddered upon hearing him say, cheerfully and to everyone present: “Jenny’s in there hosin’ down her beaver.”
In and among all of this, I can’t help but remember the hoses used to fight the three fires my family and I have been fortunate to survive, two of the fires set (nephew and matches/mother and cigarette) in Fredericton, and one (neighbour’s overnight-guest’s cigarette) in Charlottetown. Did you know that the usual working pressure of a fire hose can vary between 8 bar and 20 bar (0.8 to 2.0 MPa or 100 to 300 psi), while its bursting pressure can be up to 83 bar (8.3 MPa or 1200 psi)? Neither did I.
Anyway, in happy coincidence, the friendly man who lives next door to us now is a fireman, and given my history of house disasters, I am often relieved when I think that, should I light fire to this house (as I almost did this morning, setting off the alarm as I tried to boil water for tea. You can ask my daughter if you don’t believe me. We were talking on the phone at that time, while a marble-sized ball of leftover whatever morphed into a flame), he will know what to do.
Anyway again, speaking of the fireman next door and of his hoses (cam on!), later this morning while I was still chatting with Sarah (and after I’d put the stove fire out on my own) we – she and I – heard a horrendous hissing noise from what I imagined as a supersonic hose, its deafening whistle coming from right outside the kitchen window.
“What was that?” Sarah roared, trying to make herself heard over the racket outdoors.
“Armageddon?” I replied, knowing it is always impolite to answer a question with a question.
I looked out the window, staring at our backyard fence and at the abruptly shifting furniture (some of it heavy-enough wood), as gallons of muddy water flew over our fence and onto, and into, the white (well, it used to be white) goose-down cushion (I had hand-washed it and left it there to dry in the sun), soaking two chair cushions, which are now a mottled brown colour, the power-hose (maybe it’s a fireman thing) firing soil out of our plants and down the sides of our white (well, it used to be white) ringer washer; dirtying our chairs; lop-siding our wonderful wall hangings created by our even more wonderful friend, Mike, and splashing up through the open second-storey window onto the computer.
(I know this last part because as I ran breathless up the stairs toward the open back window, my daughter repeated herself: “What was that?”)
So all in all it was an eventful morning, filled with excitement, evocative sounds, and memories of all shapes and sizes. In fact, had this day not occurred I might never have thought to look back at my hose history (stockings aside) or thought to regale my grandchildren with these various anecdotes. But like all responsible progenitors, it now feels incumbent upon me to remind my children’s children that, undoubtedly, hoses run in our family.
