Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 19, 1995 TAG: 9509190013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He can live with ``frugal.'' And, when pressed, he will concede to being ``cheap.''
After years of driving garbage and recycling trucks, Cross has become been a master at turning other people's roadside trash into his personal treasure: the dresser-turned-tool box, the 1897 hand-crank record player, the antique lamp he cleaned up and sold at Happy's Flea Market - for $50.
But when he moved to North Roanoke County from rural Bedford County, it wasn't the wealth of suburbia's curbside leftovers that caught Cross's eye.
It was his three-figure water bill.
``After years of having a well and not having to pay for our water, you could say he went into shock,'' recounts his wife, Lelia Cross.
Louie Cross is not one to just sit there and take it, and sign the check.
He doesn't just complain to his neighbors, as most of us do, about the good-old days before Spring Hollow Reservoir came to be - when you didn't have to decide between buying Bobby's back-to-school clothes or watering your mums.
No, he is a systems man. A tinkerer tried and true.
Cross decided to harness nature's own hydrological brine.
He set three 55-gallon barrels - recycled, naturally, from old Pepsi-syrup containers - under the shortened downspouts of his house and garage. He cut the tops off and rigged the bottoms with spigots, attaching a garden hose to each.
Then he enlisted another of nature's perks - gravity - to recirculate the rainwater to Lelia's vegetable and flower beds.
There were just two problems: algae and mosquito larvae.
The whole thing was, well, gross.
Not to worry. Lelia designed an add-on contraption of her own.
A bus driver and computer wizard for Community School (her job title is ``Multimedia and Fleet Coordinator''), she remembered reading about the Chinese, who kept carp in barrels, letting them feed off the algae till they were good and fat - and ready to stir-fry.
She sent Louie out for goldfish.
Before long, the fish were fat, the water was crystal clear and the water bill had been trimmed by a third.
``Maybe one day we'll even eat the fish,'' Louie says.
He's joking. Probably.
Lelia's never quite sure. ``The fact that he's never done something before never slows him down,'' she says. ``When he announces he's gonna do some new handy thing, I've stopped even asking.''
You can think about Louie and Lelia Cross as you begin the rituals that signal the switch of the seasons: tilling under the vegetable garden, pruning the trees, caulking the windows.
While you're cleaning out your gutters, consider that the Crosses will be weather-proofing another of the family's seasonal favorites: their homemade two-story cat house.
Heated, by a light bulb.
Insulated, by shredded leaves.
And rigged with mesh wire over the bulb - to keep their critters from burning a nose.
(See, Louie was allergic to cat hair, one of the old cats started spraying when the new cat arrived on the scene, Louie kicked the cats out of the house. ...)
Maybe it is best not to ask.
It's one of those ``exotic'' things. We wouldn't understand.
Beth Macy's column runs in Tuesday and Thursday Extra. Tips on other characters and contraptions can be phoned in to her at 981-3435 or (800) 346-1234, ext. 435.
by CNB