You know who your friends are when the pipes freeze

Most of us are aware that Alpine County has the least population of all 58 of the California counties, but does it have the smallest county-wide people-count in the United States?

The least populous county is Loving County, Texas, with 60 people as of 2005. Talk about declining population; at least, we're holding our own with a census count of 1,208 people in 2000.

Small towns like Markleeville, population 165, don't have too many disadvantages.

Yes, we would like to have a few more independent businesses, but we'll leave the mega-franchises, large corporations and big stores for other places. Anonymity is not possible, but my view is that the same person, with whom you are arguing over an issue, could be the very one who comes to your aid.

Case in point; although they were not in a dispute of any sort, when Kate and "Doc" Harvey and next-door-neighbor Dierdre Wallace discovered that they had no water last week, many Markleeville residents showed up to help them.

"They were amazing," Public health nurse Kate Harvey said. "Along with water company workers Sherm Glettig and Adam Coyan, who dug and dug, Fritz Thornburg showed up with his backhoe, and they all spent much of their precious time to take care of our problem."

First, the determination was made that the houses did not have frozen pipes, nor was the problem located on their properties.

Then, the Markleeville Water Co., volunteers and paid personnel, arrived.

"If we were living in Oakland, we'd probably still be on hold, but these guys responded right away," Harvey said. "John Cassady climbed right down in our crawl space to find out if our pipes were frozen."

Wallace, also known as the "Wool Lady," not only for the knitted and crocheted garments she creates, but also because she used to own Wild Wools Gallery before it was torn down, further explained the problem with frozen pipes.

"The Harveys and I were without water from Thursday through Saturday"

Neighbor John Supery connected a hose from his house to ours, and we enjoyed having water for about three hours until his hose froze, too.

"Gary Coyan and water company President Steve Martin stopped by to give advice, and Leonard Turnbeaugh figured out that the problem was in the same location as 30 years ago.

"There have been too many freezing days this winter without the insulation that a covering of snow would provide."

Eventually, Arnold and Maynard Rakow came with Arnold's arc welder to heat up the pipes under the road, and after the ice was melted, water flowed to the two homes once again.

We love living in our village with people really caring for and about each other, and from our home, we can walk to the post office, library and neighborhood grocery.

When we took our two "sabbaticals" from Markleeville in the '80s and '90s, living in Carmel for one year and in St. Helena for four years, we could still walk to the post office, library and neighborhood grocery, and the neighbors were very friendly. Those are my standards to signify a perfect town.

-- Gina Gigli is a Markleeville resident. Reach her at ginagigli@villagigli.com.