The Watery Death of my PB Collection - 02/11/14 07:54 PM
On Saturday afternoon as I drove up to a fisheries consult in Jonesboro my phone rings. On the other end was a frantic Comanche County Water employee. He quickly informed me that the water meter on my property is running at an extremely high rate and that they needed to turn off the water to my property. I hung up and told Casey about it. We went back and forth with a thousand possibilities of where we could have such an enormous water leak. We both hoped for it to be outside and an easy repair.
After the consult we drove straight home to investigate. We were both glued to our respective windows as we pulled onto the property and drove past the pond, the garden, and the horse pen, but there was no water to be found. We both new at that point it was in the house or the detached laundry building. Thankfully it was not in the house, but instead in the laundry building. I knew that this was the best result we could have hoped for but I thought of all my things which were housed in this building.
In the winter of 2005 I was introduced to Pond Boss Magazine at the fish farm I worked for during college. Since that time I have collected every single issue Pond Boss has ever printed. I have a complete set from issue 1 all the way to last months. Most have bookmarks and notes throughout them for articles I find interesting or useful to clients. My collection lives on a book shelf, a book shelf located in that very flooded laundry building. Now, in the house I have an office where you would expect 10 years worth of fisheries books, magazines, and paperwork to live but instead my office has scrap book material, a sewing machine, and anything else Casey desires to keep close. I, like many of us try to keep a happy home so my stuff goes where its told.
As I cleaned out this building Saturday night and Sunday I found that about 3/4 of the magazines were completely ruined. The first 4 years were safe and for some reason every issue with Bruce Condello's face on it was completely dry even when the next issue was soaked to the core. As I went through every issue I thought how fitting an end to my Pond Boss collection this was. I mean a fisheries magazine ruined by fire would not be ironic but to be flooded and now completely absorbed in water that just felt a little poetic.
After the consult we drove straight home to investigate. We were both glued to our respective windows as we pulled onto the property and drove past the pond, the garden, and the horse pen, but there was no water to be found. We both new at that point it was in the house or the detached laundry building. Thankfully it was not in the house, but instead in the laundry building. I knew that this was the best result we could have hoped for but I thought of all my things which were housed in this building.
In the winter of 2005 I was introduced to Pond Boss Magazine at the fish farm I worked for during college. Since that time I have collected every single issue Pond Boss has ever printed. I have a complete set from issue 1 all the way to last months. Most have bookmarks and notes throughout them for articles I find interesting or useful to clients. My collection lives on a book shelf, a book shelf located in that very flooded laundry building. Now, in the house I have an office where you would expect 10 years worth of fisheries books, magazines, and paperwork to live but instead my office has scrap book material, a sewing machine, and anything else Casey desires to keep close. I, like many of us try to keep a happy home so my stuff goes where its told.
As I cleaned out this building Saturday night and Sunday I found that about 3/4 of the magazines were completely ruined. The first 4 years were safe and for some reason every issue with Bruce Condello's face on it was completely dry even when the next issue was soaked to the core. As I went through every issue I thought how fitting an end to my Pond Boss collection this was. I mean a fisheries magazine ruined by fire would not be ironic but to be flooded and now completely absorbed in water that just felt a little poetic.
