He came out mid-afternoon with a scuffed-up plastic bottle, the label long gone.
Threaded onto the cap was a small orange thing no longer than a marker, that said PureFlow on it. The kind of part I'd have swept off the floor.
"You asked what I do for water," he said. "This."
He tipped it back, took a long drink, and handed it to me.
"What's in it?"
"Water I filled from the pond at the back of this property 20 minutes ago. The one with the algae and the geese. Try it."
I'd walked past that pond three times a day. You would not put your hand in it, let alone your mouth.
I drank it.
It was water. Cold, clean, plain water. No grit. No pond taste. Nothing at all.
"That little filter did that," I said.
"That little filter did that."
He walked me through it. It's called PureFlow. Four stages inside it. No power, no batteries, no chemicals, no moving parts while you drink, and nothing to swap out.
It doesn't care if the grid's up. It doesn't care why the water stopped.
You put the worst fresh water you can find in the top. Pond, creek, rain barrel, the bathtub you filled before the pressure died.
Clean water comes out the bottom. That's it.
One straw filters up to 1,800 gallons. That's roughly five years of drinking water for one person, out of something you can hold between two fingers.