Looking Back to the 70's

Ah, the 70’s. I was a single mom at the time, living in Joplin, and had two roommates that shared a house with us. We were all bartenders, but I also worked days at the television station and nights at the Sheraton tending bar. After the bars closed, we’d have a pot of coffee ready and discuss the night’s stories. Full moons were especially entertaining.

Being busy women, we had decided we wanted a housekeeper. After searching awhile, one of our guy friends found out and he offered to come and clean the house as long as we never mentioned it to any of the other guys. Sounded good to us. He did a great job.

One night after he cleaned, I stumbled into my room to go to bed and there was water all over my hardwood floors. Did I mention I had a waterbed? Well, not the whole thing. I didn’t have a frame. I had a waterbed mattress on the floor. After all, this was the 70’s. We’re talking hippie here. Big posters, candles, black light, beads. Waterbed mattress. Leaking waterbed mattress.

Seems our housekeeper’s dingo boot buckle caught the seam and put a tiny rip into it that day when he was cleaning my room. The tiny rip becamse bigger and the bed was flooding my room.

Who do you call at 2:30 in the morning when your waterbed is leaking? My roommates and I grabbed all our towels and tried sopping up the water and I called the water company. Hey! They have pumps. Right? Of course they just laughed at me so I called the Joplin police. They sent an officer over who kindly offered to shoot it and put it out of my misery. I finally called Roto Rooter and he hung up on me. After all, it was the middle of the night, and it was a call about a leaky waterbed. But the guy was curious, so he came over. While the Joplin police officer watched, the Roto Rooter man put his hose through my bedroom window and emptied the waterbed in about 2 minutes flat!

I called the tv station and left a message that I would be late. Little did I know that our news department at the station picked up the police call on their scanner. I guess a few of Joplin’s finest had a good laugh at my expense and they were all talking about it. Of course, we knew most of the local cops, being bartenders in town, and they made their sweeps through the clubs on the weekends. So the station wrote up the story and put it out on the AP wire as one of those funny, weird stories they use on the news. Believe it or not, my sister saw the story on the news and called me. She lived near Alameda, California at the time.

So that was my fifteen seconds of fame!