What Could Possibly Go Wrong

Like many ranchers, I use cattle as a tool to manipulate the land.

Cows save a lot of diesel as they create divots to catch rain and they fertilize as they go.

And, frankly, they taste better than wheatgrass on my plate.

So when I finally got tired of watching a field petrify, I decided to graze my cattle on that grass to rejuvenate the land.

But cattle need a drink every day.

No problem.

An old well sits inside a ramshackle shack.

I can pump water into a tank for the cows.

The tank even might not blow away if it stays full of water.

My friend, Katie, and her husband, Jeff, came for a visit so we decided to investigate that well.

Our investigation revealed a 6-inch casing and an old reciprocating pump with rebar inside a 2-inch, galvanized pipe. The well log noted the well is 41-feet deep.

We needed to pull out the galvanized pipe.

Katie and Jeff were the perfect co-conspirators for this project.

Katie is always game for solving dilemmas.

A few years ago, I couldn’t get all of the air pockets out of a gravity-fed pipeline so Katie and I dug up the valve.

It was six feet down.

I hate wasted effort so my shovel dug a hole barely big enough for me to slide into. Katie protected her barely-healed back by lugging buckets of mud to the surface.

Katie doesn’t post our adventures on Facebook anymore because the comments she received about our deep hole referenced our innate disregard for safety and the sanctity of human life.

We didn’t know we were doing something dangerous until Facebook friends told us we were.

And we didn’t even tell them about how the valve shot water straight into the air so hard that it blew my hat off.

As the water settled, Katie laughed “do it again!”

Pulling 41 feet of rusty, pitted pipe up through a rickety roof would be no problem for us.

What could possibly go wrong?

We loaded a handyman jack, some chain, a couple of pipe wrenches, my Sawzall, the generator and some gas into the back of the pickup.

We wrapped the chain around the pipe and made a loop for the jack.

I have a love-hate relationship with handyman jacks.

They can lift an amazing amount of weight.

But they might drop that weight at any given moment to kill me.

Jeff held the jack vertical, I pumped the jack arm and Katie was the brake. She held tension on the pipe wrench every time Jeff and I reset the chain and jack.

We giggled as we guided the pipe through a hole in the roof, giddy at the success of our Gerry-rigged plan.

We thought about flying a flag from the pipe.

We counted couplers as the pipe rose.

We decided to share our safe techniques with the worrywarts as soon as we placed the pipe on the ground next to the well casing.

I clearly remember hearing crashing and banging, bodies dodging, and grabbing the jack to protect my friends, but I opened my eyes to see Jeff leaning against the wall of the shack, hands still on the handyman and Katie counting her fingers and toes.

Even the wind stopped blowing while we regrouped.

Katie had her appendages. So did Jeff.

The dust settled.

Our own laughter startled us.

We laughed at ourselves, laughed at the consequences of teasing worrywarts, laughed at the universe’s impeccable timing.

Then we pulled the broken galvanized pipe out the door of the shack, wrapped the chain around the rusty, pitted rebar that still poked above the well casing, and started jacking again.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?