You Should Be Ashamed of Your Hose

Photo by Seiya Maeda on Unsplash

I could not believe my eyes. I was walking through Walmart, attempting to stick to my list for the sake of my budget. I had one last item to grab before the mad dash to the self-checkout so that I would not impulse-buy an electric dirt bike or a new suitcase for the trips I can’t afford to go on.

That’s when it caught my eye. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. On the top shelf of the indoor garden section sat what appeared to be a whiskey barrel. I had to know what this was and why it was in the garden section of all places. If anything, it would have made more sense in an 1800’s beer aisle, not the garden section in 2026.

I drew closer and, behold, it was in fact the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen. It was a whiskey barrel for your back porch. That’s right. It was a barrel that you put on your porch to hide your garden hose from prying eyes.

Instantly, I began to think of my back porch and the hose that sits there rolled up in a circle. Am I supposed to be hiding my hose now? I know you can’t use pesticides anymore. It's organic, or don't do it in your backyard garden these days. But now I’m not supposed to even have a visible hose?

Am I to be ashamed of the fact that I water my garden or my chickens? Yes, do it before the sun comes up and hide the hose when you are finished. Heaven forbid the neighbors see you caring for your plants and animals with a hose like some kind of peasant.

A whiskey barrel is a very interesting choice for covert hose hiding. After all, if a green hose sticks out in its natural environment, don’t you imagine a giant dark brown barrel would stick out twice as much?

If I went to my neighbor’s house and saw his hose on the back porch, I wouldn’t think anything of it. Truthfully, I probably wouldn’t even notice it at all. It’s a hose. That's where it should be. It's not on his roof. It's on his back porch.

But a big barrel screams, “I forgot to put my whiskey in the cellar!” I would think, “ My goodness, I need to let him know that he left his whiskey on the porch! Clearly, he had a backyard bender the night before that I wasn’t invited to.

The aesthetic isn’t the only ridiculous thing about this product. You are telling me someone had a warehouse full of empty whiskey barrels that look 200 years old, and they asked the question, “What should we do with all these barrels?”

Then Carl, the intern, pipes up and says, “Hoses. We could hide hoses in them, sir.” If it were my warehouse, I can assure you that Carl would have been ignored and checked for a fever immediately because that is a dumb idea.

This product is a great example of the insane consumerism that is ruining this country. With everyone living paycheck to paycheck, forcing products like these onto the masses isn't going to help us get out of the crippling debt most of us find ourselves in.

But anyway, it was a lot more expensive than I thought, and it was really hard to fit in my trunk.

Photo by Sohan Rayguru on Unsplash