KEN GRAHAM: FROM THE PUBLISHER

On Sunday morning I got up, put a couple of logs in the wood stove and then walked across the cold wood floor in my bare feet to the kitchen to fill the kettle and make my morning pot of coffee. When I turned on the tap, the water barely trickled out. And then it stopped.

I stood there and stared at it in disbelief for about a minute. I turned the faucet back and forth several times. Nothing. I stared at it some more.

I'm not normally someone who wallows in self pity, but at this particular moment I felt like my car had just been stolen.

I live in a fairly new house, and we just got a new pump for our well about six months ago. It all cost a heap of money, but we were happy to pay. The roof never leaks and the walls are well insulated and the water always flows. Until it doesn't

I called the pump guy, Bob Gemmell, at 7:30 on Sunday morning. I hated to do it, but God bless him, he came out a couple of hours later.

"The pump's trying to run," he said after checking the wires with his ohmmeter. "But you're froze up."

It was about 15 degrees as we stood there staring at the well head. He asked me if I ever heard my well making a whooshing noise. "Why yes," I said, "It does that all the time, but I never knew why."

"Barometric pressure," he told me. He explained that when there's high pressure in the atmosphere, air will get sucked into the ground through the well casing; in this case, really cold air.

"People don't know this, but the ground breaths," he said.

"Yeah, I didn't know that," I replied.

He told me it was probably just frozen at the top, and I needed something to warm up the pipe. Then I needed to seal up the cap on the well head better. Then he left and said to call him if all that didn't work.

I found my old heat gun - it's like a hair dryer on steroids. (But don't ever try to dry your hair with one.) I spent the next ten minutes sitting on the frozen ground at 15 degrees, pointing that gun down the well casing and wishing I had some coffee.

It worked. The pipes finally made a couple of cracking sounds and then the pump came to life.

That belated cup of coffee tasted mighty good, thanks to my new hero, Bob Gemmell.