Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Orange underwear

Julie Carter

Sharing my orange underwear experiences used to be restricted to gatherings of ranch folk who knew exactly what I meant and how the skivvies got in such a state.

Always ready to be amazed, I recently learned that small towns with very old iron pipe waterlines often experience the same casualties to the resident Fruit of the Looms. It is a subtle reminder that we are still living somewhat primitively.

Here in New Mexico we guard water as the precious commodity it is, ranking right up there with sainthood and the sacraments. We may possibly be a little more cautious with our water than the average earth dweller except perhaps those that have camels tethered outside their tents.

In order to stay ahead of the water game the best way possible, ranch water is "stockpiled" in large storage tanks located near the well or along the pipelines that transport it to the backside of the pastures. Because many outfits have to pump every drop of water necessary for themselves and their livestock, it's a full-time job to keep ahead of it.

Big circular storage tanks are made from large sheets of metal welded together and set in concrete. On some older ranches, it is not uncommon to see old railroad tanker cars parked next to the well and used for water storage.

This is where my orange underwear adventure began. Just such a tanker sat on the hill behind the ranch house.

It stored the water for all the domestic use, as well as the corrals and several pipelines that ran north and south from the headquarters. To keep up with the demand, the well's submersible pump usually ran 24 hours a day.

Unwritten ranch law says not keeping the water storage tanks full is a major crime, because inevitably, the minute the tank is allowed to get low, or worse, completely empty, Murphy's law takes over. The well will simply, with no warning, quit working.

Following the cussing over that, there will be days and nights of hauling water from somewhere until the well is fixed.

The pump went out on a Saturday night. As luck would have it, everyone was gone early to late on Sunday, so no one noticed.

By late Monday morning, I knew without looking that the well was likely down. I was doing laundry and my water pressure was getting weak. Hoping maybe it was something as simple as a broken float on the drinking tub at the corrals, I went looking for that but found nothing.

Remember, the washer is still running.

I went back to the house to find the rinse-cycle pumping water into my washer that was a very vibrant rust orange. The bottom-of-the-tank rusty dregs from that old railroad tanker were flowing over the clothes.

It was the last load of laundry for the day and it was the underwear. The white ones.

While Martha Stewart may have quickly given a marketable name to that particular shade of color soaking into the BVDs, I could only think of unladylike things to say. Indeed, for a bit, I lost my religion.

To shortcut the expletives and the futile wash and rewash efforts, I will share that for at least a year, all the members of my household wore underwear that matched in color - something resembling a dark and very unmanly peachy tone.

No, it wasn't a life-threatening trauma. It is just one of those "life on the ranch" adventures they don't put in the brochures.