Every summer the town of Claresholm enacts water rationing.  Southern Alberta is often very hot, very dry and very, very windy.

My scariest memory was the day the uniformed town cop knocked on the back porch door of our house. My three-year-old-self saw my dad hide behind the entranceway door to the kitchen and say to my Mom, “Tell him I’ve gone to Timbuktu”.

Mom found me in the bedroom sobbing my eyes out because I thought my dad was going to jail.  I’m not sure how I knew about the concept of jail then, but somehow I did.

My dad had been caught watering his vegetable garden outside of assigned watering hours. The penalty?  The town cop invited himself in for coffee.