a watercart named desire

When was the last time Arthur Miller and Samuel Coleridge stopped by your house to write a sitcom script for your day?


That is the only answer I can come up for Wednesday's little misadventure.


Expatriates living in Mexico have plenty of water jug stories. I think one of the first tales I heard about La Manzanilla involved a leaking jug and an embarrassed child.


But, for those of you who do not live in the land of jumbo water bottles, let me give you a bit of background.


Once upon a time there were two groups of expatriates living in Mexico.


The first group was the equivalent of mountain men and conquistadors rolled into one. They feared neither man nor beast, and craved adventurous highs so much that they would drink the adrenalin of puma every morning.


Then there was the second group. Not quite as adventurous. Maybe even cautious. The type of people who move from Minnesota to Mexico for a new life, but who are certain that there are sharks living in any body of water larger than a shower stall.


The two groups differed on water. The first group said: "Sure, there are infrastructure problems. But my people have been drinking this water for 40 years without one sick day." The second group responded: "You can never be too careful. This is how Warren Harding died, you know."


The dispute was resolved when all of the people in the first group mysteriously died of amoebic dysentery. We expatriates now honor the second group by using bottled water for drinking and cooking.


But there is a little trick here. We do not saunter down to the well and fetch a pail of water -- all Jack and Jill-like. No. Just like the crazy Empress Carlotta, we have hired hands fetch it for us.


At our casa, it is a young man who drives around in a truck playing a recording of someone imitating a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan call. You hear the truck, run outside, flag him down, and purchase the water you need.


That sounds a bit easier than it is.


Mexico is filled with all types of sounds. Dogs. Roosters. The ocean. The neighbor's stereo. You learn to tune it out.


But you need to develop a very subtle hearing where you can tune out all of that, while tuning in the calls of the gas man, the bread man, the tamale man, the lime man, the ice man, and, yes, the Tarzan call of the young water man.


On Wednesday, I had used up the second of my water bottles. I needed to get replacements -- soon.


All day, I listened with the laser-like hearing of a presidential candidate. Nothing. Well, lots of sounds. No Tarzan.


So, I decided to take a nap. There I was in the hammock on the patio wearing nothing but my underwear and I hear it. Tarzan is driving slowly down my street.


Experience tells me I have about 30 seconds to catch him.


I jump out of the hammock. Where are the rest of my clothes? Up stairs.


Don't panic. No time to get them. I will hail him and then get them.


Too many seconds wasted worrying about propriety, I dash to the garage gate and flip open the latch.


Or, I try to flip it open. Upon leaving the house that morning, Marta had double locked the gate.


Where are the keys? In my shorts. Where are my shorts? Upstairs. I already knew that.


I have no choice now. I run up the stairs to find my shorts and my keys and a bit of dignity.


I can hear him driving in front of the house. Throwing caution to the wind, I run through the living room and out onto the balcony that overlooks the street. He is turning the corner.


In my best anguished voice, I stood there in my underwear, calling out: "A-G-U-A. A-G-U-A." Sounding like Stanley Kowalski auditioning for a role in the Spanish version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.


Like most sitcoms, I did not get what I was after, but I was appropriately humiliated in the process. (Of course, those of you who know me well know that standing on a public balcony in my underwear would not even rate on my humiliation scale.)


But I do have two empty jugs as evidenced by the photograph at the top of this post.


We will have a new production tomorrow. I was thinking of a novel way to get the truck to stop. Perhaps a remake of Anna Karenina.