LETTER from PARIS: Out of Water, Out of Luck

LETTER from PARIS: Out of Water, Out of Luck

By John Sherman

I have on my office wall a list of signatories petitioning a water system for Paris some time during the Depression, asking for a dollar a month to repay the hookup charge.

Eventually, a well was drilled and the water was pumped into a reservoir above the village and fed down by gravity. When we opened the Ashby Inn in 1984, “febrile” was a euphemism for water delivery. Depending on your place on the street, a good shower was a prayer, never mind a commercial dishwasher.

It was our first Virginia winter to face the hated weather reports. We despised them. Even the slightest warning of snow or one of our most feared, “wintery mix,” would start the cancellations.

“We understand, but the news is calling for, like, two in ten chance of iffy weather. So you might reconsider. Well, we hope to see you again soon,” we replied before the expletive. Particularly galling, was the guess that many of our clients were simply hesitant about forcing their “off road” Range Rovers and Porsches from the warmth of their heated garages—-and into two inches of snow.

One particularly grey February afternoon, the snow was following the ominous weather warnings. In an ironic reversal, we began calling reservation numbers and explaining that we were shutting down for the evening. We warded off all but about twelve coming to dinner. Efforts to contact overnight guests were much less successful. They arrived, stomping their feet, ecstatic about being snowed in at a country inn. We put on a good face and got them into their rooms with logs laid for a fire. By that time, about four inches had fallen.

Those dinner guests who pressed on to Paris were advised that, because of the rapid accumulation, the menu would be abbreviated—along with the appeal to stuff it down quickly (although not in those words) to give the staff a head start for home.

An hour into service, the place went dark. First time, ever. A fallen tree on the mountain.

Normally unprepared for any eventuality, we managed to muster a few flashlights for the kitchen where gas flames burned. The desserts were lined up by a woman with a flashlight clenched in her teeth. The chef and sous chef worked by the glow from the Viking range. They were pounding out the entrees. Some, like many of the desserts, were misdirected. There would be no doovers. Diners with late reservations were turned away. (Forget the innkeepers’ mantra that “all are welcome.”)

There was no sense of urgency in the dining rooms, as each table had a small oil lantern. I recall my rising dread as the small flames seemed to prolong the feeling of intimacy and adventure.

Gone was any way to print up dinner checks. We could run the credit cards by hand under flashlight, but it demanded some dexterity—and took forever. Rather than make them wait, as the snow piled up, we gave them a business card with instructions to call back for their bottom lines the following day. They all did.

“We have no water,” came a shout from the kitchen.

The overnight guests. No water. One flush.

I can’t remember who had the idea, but quickly, the kitchen staff was sent into the night with two 60-quart stock (as in chicken) pots and a couple of shovels. The pots, up to the brim, were carried back and set on the burners to melt. The sixty quarts of snow ended up as about three quarts of water. So back into the night.

Finally, we had melted enough to fill individual sauce pans, allowing each guest an extra flush.

The next morning, I was recounting our travails to a neighbor and cursing the water system. He seemed nonplussed. Turns out I was the only one in the village, when the lights went out, who didn’t rush to fill their bathtubs with the last of the water running its course through Paris. I don’t recall there being any sense of sharing between neighbors. The house at the top of the village got the most water, as it gradually ran out before the last house.

Of course. How dumb of us. Instruct guests to immediately fill their tubs. Took a couple of days before my bitterness bled out.

P.S.

A couple of summers later, I was checking in an elderly couple. I thought I’d seen her before. They were out for a friend’s birthday. It was a bad water weekend. I explained our dilemma of tapering supply and asked them to try to conserve as much as possible.

The woman, in her 70s, laughed and explained that she grew up on a ranch in southern Arizona where water was theessential currency. She shrugged her shoulders and told me they were just fine with the situation.

As I closed the door, it struck me that I had been talking water with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

I drew breakfast service the next morning—a job I hated. Early morning smiles came hard. Her Honor and her husband showed up for breakfast a half hour early. It was just the two of us, as her husband remained silent, obviously ailing.

We soon established that she and my father both grew up in southern Arizona. He in Bisbee, a mining town on the Mexican border. We discovered our mutual passion for fly fishing. What impressed me most was her curiosity—about the inn, about the Civil War, about fox hunting. I was tempted to ask her about the court. But didn’t.

P.P.S.

My appeals for a backup generator for the well finally was granted.