Monday, August 11, 2003 7:22:00 PM

De gustibus non est disputandum!

Yesterday at the company picnic, held south of Pittsburgh in Washington County in the park environs of the, as the sales brochures proclaim, largest swimming pool in the region everyone praised the hot dogs. And then! We found that not only were they not Hebrew National with the fine spices, or Nathan's redolent of turn of the century Coney Island Hype, nor Kahn's the wiener the world awaited, not fat kids skinny kids Armour, not even those stuffed by hand by a little man at the village two miles further on down Route 40 who's whole life and passion has been given to the development of the perfect dog.

Nope!

These my sweltering Ball Park Fiends were Turkey Dogs. Quelle horreur!

It did get me to thinking.

Of the fact that I, by far, prefer a caffeine free diet cola to one loaded with straight syrup. That for a time I bought wine by the box. That the first pipe tobacco that I loved was called Cherry Blend. That I started to drink Postem in a fit of health and actually began to prefer it to coffee, but most of all I thought of my old man and the water collected from the source of all the world's deep well of water, lovingly bottled from a rusted pipe hidden behind vegetation in a rock formation somewhere between Harmarville and Dorseyville.

After the laborious trip to the holy fount in our Root Beer and White, Wood Trimmed, Rambler Station Wagon he would reverently place a half gallon glass jug sweating from the coolness of the clear ichor within into the fridge. Swing the door closed and look at us in a kind of spiritual daze and explain to me and my brother, who sat at the kitchen table open to all lore and baloney, that here was the finest water in the world! Nay, the universe! Restorative and sweet! Ponce De Leon had missed this fountain by a thousand miles or more.

Thereafter, he would pour water into a glass from the sacred vessel, drink deeply, smack his lips and proclaim loudly for all the world to witness, "Man! Now that is water!" Then look sadly at the dwindling supply figuring the days until he would have to head north and west into the wild Pennsylvania forest for a refill.

I admit it. It was cruel! But one summer Sunday morning when we spotted less than an inch left in the bottle, my brother and I, with a daring born of weeks of lip smacking and water praising, emptied the small portion left and profaned the container by filling it about one eighth full with less than perfectly filtered, pumped from the Allegheny to a water tower and distributed to the whole neighborhood, tap water.

You should know that my father was not an easy man. He taught me to drive largely by swinging his fist into my meaty shoulder with every unpardonable traffic error that I committed. People wonder now why I flinch when I mistakenly make a turn without properly signaling, or run a yellow light, or back improperly into a parking space. Just the way I was trained. Pow! So although we thought that gag was a funny one, we also felt grave trepidation when the old man swung open the refrigerator door later that morning.

He grabbed the glass jug, swirled the water around until it cylcloned up the side of the bottle. Took a glass from the cupboard, poured the rapidly swirling water into the frost patterned drinking glass, lifted it to his mouth and drank long and deep. My brother and I were still as squirrels, expecting a storm, ready to flee the flailing fists. The outburst came loud and clear. There are people in Cleveland who swear they heard it.

"Man!" he sang at the top of his lungs, "Now that is water!"

And we began to howl! Tears on our faces, unable to breathe, lay down on the floor and thumped loudly and laughed for everything that we were worth. The old man, more curious than angry, was able after a time to calm us down. "What the hell is so funny?" Empty glass in his hand.

"Man," we explained, "that was tap water!"

I'll give him this. Not one dark cloud formed in his face, not one fist curled. He just began to laugh.

We filled that jug from the kitchen sink faucet for the rest of the summer.