The expandable garden hose is the best idea of the century. Except when it isn’t.
I neither credit nor blame Italy for its design. It’s made in China. I bought both sections of hose at the local ferramenta (hardware store; a godsend for anyone with a new house and garden who doesn’t have a car) but neither do I hold responsible the brothers who own the store, nor the Egyptian fellow they reputedly bought it, and its inventory, from. The hose is a good idea – with interesting surprises.
The hose at rest – that is, when not filled with water – is about two meters long, green, and shriveled. Turn the water on, it fills behind the pistol-head-sprayer thing, extends to about seven meters, and becomes smooth and hard. It remains green. Not the color, but the engineering can’t help but remind one of a penis. And why not base a garden hose on a popular feature of anatomy? It’s a model that has satisfied its purpose for millennia. But being of human design, the hose has attributes not shared by the male member.
The inside of the hose is a blue rubber tube, very stretchy. The blue tube is sheathed in a fabric sleeve that holds its shape as it fills and grows in length. You may wonder how I know so much about how the thing works. You learn these things when you’ve paid for something that breaks with a regularity that is, at least at first, inexplicable.
The first time the hose broke it was apparently my fault. I had only one section at that point, and it didn’t quite reach to the extremity of the garden where sits the thirsty camellia. So, I gave it what I thought was a gentle tug. The hose came apart right at the plastic slip lock that connects it to the faucet. The releasing pressure caused the hose to slither like an angry snake, and it sprayed me down as I danced about in panic.
I took the hose to the ferramenta. There, Rafael patiently slipped the green fabric a centimeter at a time over the blue tube until the tube was again visible. Then he stretched the tube-end over the nozzle that is meant to hold it in place, secured a clamp sort of thing over the join, and told me to move as much fabric as possible through the collar that screwed the pieces together because he was tired of fiddling with it.
I did what he suggested but didn’t quite understand that last part about fabric and collar, so as soon as I turned the water on, it sprayed me down again. That was May 11th. I flew away on the 12th and left the hose hanging at the garden wall.
When I returned a couple of weeks ago, feeling in a jetlagged and mellow mood, I looked at the forlorn wrinkled green hose and was moved to determine what I’d done wrong. In the heightened receptivity that jetlag can sometimes induce, Rafael’s instructions to move fabric towards the connector suddenly made sense, so I reproduced his patient feeding of blue through green, worked the fabric into the screw-on collar, and tightened it as securely as I could. It worked brilliantly – for about a minute. I’d not been rigorous enough in feeding green fabric but in principle the approach was correct. Soaked through and through, I commenced another half-hour of tedious scooching at twilight.
In 1972, I visited my first cousin once removed who was named, as was my father, Pete Zarko. He lived in the mountains outside a town called Ravno in Herzegovina. Ravno means “flat” in Croatian. Naming the town in that way was surely someone’s idea of a joke. Petar’s village, named Gaic (which means “actor”) lies five kilometers outside of Ravno. So mountainous and rocky is the terrain around both towns that the last four of those kilometers could not form into a trail or road, you just had to know where you were going. Fortunately, another cousin was guiding me.
Anyway, this remarkable man called Petar had lived in California’s Santa Clara Valley from 1909 to 1929. When I met him, he still spoke the English of that time, filled with colorful swear words, similes, and metaphors. It was summer, so his wife cooked everything (and baked bread) over an open fire pit in a “summer kitchen,” basically a shed attached to the main house. In short, life in Gaic only peripherally referenced the latter 20th century.
One day, it was time to cut the hay. To cut hay Petar had to sharpen his scythe. He did this by hammering on the blade’s edge as it lay against a specially-shaped stone. About mid-way through, the hammer handle broke. Without missing a beat, and with no use of this vintage English cuss words, he moved to the wood pile where he identified the best candidate for a new handle, worked it with a knife until the end fit the hole in the hammer head, and pounded in two iron wedges (with a rock he used specially for this job) to hold the head in place. By then, it was past twilight, and he didn’t feel he could finish sharpening the scythe. Next morning after waking at four so he could take the cow three kilometers up steep inclines to pasture (he was 83 at the time) he finished sharpening and cut the hay.
To this 23 year-old who was always trying to prove he could do the next thing on his list more quickly than anyone would have any reason to wish for – and with as much patience as a hog in heat – watching all this was to witness a miracle.
So, I sat on the top step leading up to my garden on Via delle Pertiche Prima, took the green fabric cover, and one centimeter at a time, advanced the blue tube inside it for about a meter until it shone a-glistening and ready to stretch over the plastic connector. The hose was tested and it worked well for a day or two.
But I had still not tucked the fabric in tightly enough. I saw it with my own eyes. The green fabric pulled loose while the blue tube grew a huge bubble that burst into a spray of water, most of it ending up on me. The engineering of this thing was becoming clearer.
So, taking a cue from cousin Petar, I sat down again, and coaxed the tube through what this time was a meter and a half of green fabric, and when it came to tucking, I tucked in earnest.
What I didn’t do was to trim the green fabric sleeve. Because the blue tube had burst, it was now 20 centimeters shorter, and as the system is calibrated to maintain a balance in tension between tube and sleeve, that there was extra room inside the green casing meant the blue tube expanded past what it was designed to tolerate. So later that day as I was using the hose – and glowing with pride at how well I had repaired it – water suddenly stopped flowing. Blif. Nothing. Then it started leaking, everywhere, and mostly onto me.
I felt the hose near the connector. The tube had not slipped loose, it was still attached. I felt along the green fabric a little further; nothing inside. Nothing for two meters, this time. The blue tube had broken neatly off at about 30 centimeters. Back to scooching.
In the end, I must admit that even after forty-some years I have not achieved the patience of cousin Petar. After having scooched for a meter, just to look at the remaining meter made my fingers sore. I employed scissors. I trimmed the fabric. And the blue tube – but not as much as the sleeve. Now there is too much blue tube proportionate to the green sleeve (waiting for that, were ya?) but I am willing to risk that too much blue is better than too little. The beast twists into grotesque gnarls as it fills up, but I think it unlikely to burst.
Still, the compromise is a blow to my pride. That I might continue to imagine myself spiritually advanced, I pretend to believe that one day Petar’s hammer handle broke again, at which he growled, let loose a string of vintage expletives long ago smuggled in from California, and sent a neighbor down to the hardware store in Ravno to fetch a new hammer. But I strongly suspect he actually carved a replacement while humming a centuries-old folk tune.
Two weeks later, the hose is still working. And if it bursts again, you won’t hear about it from me.