HOW DO YOU LIKE PLUMBING SO FAR?

My Dad taught me early on about the power of labor, free hands, and no pay. Whenever he was able, he’d use us kids to do all those little things on his worksite that made the project easy… for others. I was exposed to a lot of tradesmen in my early youth, most of them were related. In those days it was not uncommon to trade labor, favors or just a helping hand with your relatives and friends. In several instances of my childhood abuses, I was assigned as the plumber’s helper on many of my Dads projects. He had many projects as he and Mom kept cranking out kids. The plumbers were great guys all of them. They were also my uncles and while I loved them all. 

In those early years I didn’t appreciate their craft as my assignments with them didn’t allow for it. “Don’t ask questions, stay ahead of their needs, no talking, no walking, run from place to place,” Dad would order. My uncles became spoiled working for my Dad, they had their own personal, adolescent robot each time they came on a Terry project.

Fast forward fifteen years and I know no more about plumbing than when I was twelve years old and humping pipe for the uncles. Now, I am a joint owner of a forty-two-year-old house with limited craftsman abilities except for the carpentry that started while I was ten (the basis for another story). My wife and I purchased an older home because of the charm of the house and the neighborhood; in addition, some reassurance that if some other craftsmen were needed, I might be able to call on an uncle.

Our daughter was a newborn, our first, absolutely adorable and could go through a supply of cloth diapers like butter on a hot biscuit. On one of those early days, my dear wife is leaving the bathroom and says, “Dear, I think we may have lost a diaper.” I would guess the questioning expression on my face generated the follow-up response from her. “Well, I put two dirty diapers in the toilet to soak and only one came back,” she mystically elicited as part two of her announcement. Now we have a mystery, “two in one out.” I didn’t take it, my baby daughter didn’t take it, my wife didn’t have it (I know because I frisked her, we were young) there was no one else in the house. Now it was time to break this down. “Ok dear, just what did you do at the toilet?” I asked. I hear her now in a little girl  ‘ I broke it and I’m afraid,’ voice as she responded, “Well, I put two diapers in to soak, you know the dirty business, then I simultaneously grab the diapers, shook them out and flushed. It was then that I noticed that I only had one diaper when I put in two.” My wife, the loveliest person on earth never listed math as her strong suit nor the powers of deduction. “Darling when you shook and flushed, you obviously let one go down the toilet, it’s headed towards the sewage treatment plant,” I said hopefully. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it is,” I followed. Not our luck.

Two or three days later the reporter of all bad things in our house has another proclamation. “Honey, the shower is draining very slowly and there is some black icky stuff around the drain,” she said innocently. “Well it’s happened, the dainty diaper is hung up somewhere in the sewer line and now we are BACKING UP,” I thought to myself, not wanting to let the little woman feel any guiltier over our stolen diaper. I check out the situation in the shower. It is not just the shower but also the adjacent tub; no doubt the vanity and toilet aren’t far behind (no pun intended). It’s time for a measured manly plumbing response which I don’t have so the best I can come up with is, “I’ll need to go to the hardware store” (maybe they’ll tell me what to do).

I’m in the hardware store with a deer in the headlights look when one of the aisle monitors asks if I need assistance. I relay the situation and his response is that I’ll probably need a plumber. “Drat”, I think. There is no way I’m going to embarrass myself with my lack of knowledge by asking my uncles for help with a little stoppage. They would think that I had learned nothing while being their assigned slave.” They were right but I never had the chance to ask. “ In the alternative, (I was beginning to appreciate the clerks direction) you could use  “Liquid Plumber” to loosen up your drains and maybe free up the diaper and let it head toward its manifest destiny, the sewage treatment plant,” the clerk offered. “That’s it,” I thought, “I’ve been rescued by a complete stranger.” I’m standing in the plumbing section in wonderment over the vast array of liquid miracle selections available to stoppage victimhood. That’s when I gazed upon my hopeful salvation “Liquid Plumbr”. My hand reaches for the product like a man in the desert reaches for the last cup of water when it occurs to me, suppose I take two cups? I grab two of the latest in plumbing miracles which now I think should be called “Plumber Eliminator”. 

I dance out of the store and hasten home eager in my quest to send the rogue cloth to meet its maker. I approach the enclosed shower with some trepidation unaware of what exactly could be lying at the base. There it is, dreaded muck residue from the slowly subsiding liquid that was formerly residing. Armed with two containers of the modern miracle, I crack the top of the first and pour it readily into the drain and watch it disappear. As a ‘never wanted to be a plumber’ my logic tells me that “Two is better than one.” As I reach for the second container of magical elixir,  I crack it, pour it in and watch it too disappear. While waiting for the miracle to happen, I have decided to read the directions for the product. I get to the part that says “Under no circumstances mix two types of liquid drain cleaner product”. That’s when it happened. A giant blue flame, followed by an explosion shot out of the shower drain system. I retreat against the wall behind me and slide down to a position of protection not knowing the extent or duration of the sewage warfare. Puzzled, I pick up the two containers and wonder what could have elicited this reaction when I noticed that I have picked up a container of “Liquid Plumbr” and a container of “Mr. Plumber”. Apparently, I have discovered a new source of rocket fuel, but not a drain cleaner.

My first hopeful resolution having failed, I bite the bullet and call an uncle, Uncle Sam. He is the closest, albeit somewhat quirky and potentially lethal. “Hi Unc, it’s Les, your favorite nephew with a little problem, I’ve got a diaper in my sewer pipe willing to take a cruise downstream but is has encountered a blockade of some sorts,” I offer. Now Uncle Sam, who never graduated from high school but offered to take a scholarship to the ‘school of hard knocks or Alcatraz whichever came first,” is not getting my attempt at glib discourse. Noticing the dead air, I retreat to the basics, “Got a diaper stuck in a pipe, what do I do?” “Oh, the old lost diaper trick,” he responded. “Uncle Sam has been around I thought, he’s smarter than he appears.”

After a brief description of the facts, sans my foray into the invention of rocket propellant, he replied, “Got some questions for you nephew, and you’re not my favorite, do you know where your main sewer line is as it leaves the house?” “Yes, it goes down my yard to an easement between lots. As a matter of fact, there is a vent for the sewer line in the yard (amazing myself at some plumbing knowledge).” “Great,” he continued, “pull a line from the vent to a spot on the back of the house where the drain line comes out. Then pick a spot along the line and start digging. You’ll have to dig down to the line which could be anywhere from two feet to five feet down. It should be a clay pipe, orange in color.” “Wow, this seems fairly straight forward,” I thought. “Then what?” I asked. “When you hit the pipe clear all around it, then get a hammer, you do have a hammer don’t you?, Strike the top of the pipe and punch a hole in it. Look inside, if a large amount of stuff (nice word for shit) bubbles out of there, your blockage (oh boy now technical talk) is downhill, if the water is trickling by, your blockage is uphill’” he offered. I’m thinking that this plumbing stuff is pretty simple; the ‘stuff’ always runs downhill. “Then what?’ I follow, now with a pencil losing ground to the wood surrounding the lead and on my last piece of 4” x 4” notepaper. “Well, I can’t stop there with the company plumbing truck, I’m in shit with my boss (go figure) so I’ll drive by and drop a drain snake off on your lawn. It’s easy to use; it goes together in sections with snap fittings and works like opening a bottle of wine. After you clear the drain, cut a coffee can in half then mix a little mortar and wire the can back onto the pipe like a saddle. Mark the area with a stake and backfill. You’ll always have a cleanout for your next blockage. I’ll call you later in the day to see how you are doing.”” Thanks, Unc, I’m on it first thing in the morning,” I say as I hang up.

It’s a cloudy morning at our Burlingame home, rainfall is imminent but I am driven. I announce my mission to my wife and daughter with the resolution that by the end of the day, victory and maybe a diaper will be ours, rain or shine. These are the days long before cellphones. “By the way dear, Uncle Sam will be calling sometime later in the day make sure you call me in, I can’t miss his call,” I request.

I grab my minimal selection of tools and work boots for the task. I follow Uncle Sam’s directions and I’m in a position to dig; so I select a position somewhere along the sixty feet available along the pulled line. It is starting to get misty but I am resolute. I start digging and I am down about three feet and I begin to doubt my method and choice when the shovel strikes something hard, and metal? I’m looking for a clay pipe! I keep digging and discover that the metal is a saddle, covering the clay pipe in question! Someone was here before me. This is my lucky day! I remove the makeshift covering to discover that water (stuff liquid) is trickling down the pipe; ergo, the blockage is uphill! I am a plumber. The plumber’s snake is not on site yet but I have an idea, I have an electricians snake, given to me by my good neighbor Jack, who has reached an age when he is offloading spares of anything that I will take. I clamber out of my three-foot foxhole, now becoming muddy because of the constant drizzle. With the electrician’s pull wire (also known as a snake) in hand, I jump into the pit like a soldier preparing for “incoming”. I unfurl the wire and work my way up the pipe to the dam maker, bum cover, cloth of doom. I have hooked something, and then it slips off. I am resolute and try again and again. Finally, I hook something and pull it towards me down the pipe. Like a newborn child, it appears through the previously concocted orifice and out it comes. However, the water continues to trickle down the drainpipe, thus my wife and daughter have created their own little dam in our drainpipe. I need a plumber’s snake. I hear the squeal of tires somewhere out in front of the house, one hundred feet away. I also hear a tinkling of something metal out there followed by a retreating vehicle. Once more, I scramble out of the sticky goo that is my surroundings and head for the front of my house. There it is, I observe, a brand new, six-section snake ready for assembly and action. One section has a corkscrew end, another has a tee shaped handle, and the remainders are snap-together sections. I am honored; I may be the first one to use this. “It’s just like opening a bottle of wine,” I remember Uncle Sam’s quote.

With the snake sections on my shoulder, I march in time toward the mission with confidence in my knowledge and ability to perform the task, rain or shine and wish there was some shine. I’m in the pit assembling, piece by piece, the sections of exaggerated wine cork remover and advance toward the blockage. As I strike the mass I remember the instructions to turn the snake past the dam to make sure I get it all. My luck is diminishing because it is starting to rain; buckets of rain that are starting to fill my foxhole. I press on and give the assembly a tug. I hear a whooshing sound akin to that when a locomotive pushes air through a tunnel as it races forward and I have a realization in my non-plumbing brain, “What could be coming toward me but four days of Terry digestive product!” It’s too late. As I turn toward the incline of my self-constructed gravesite, the product issues forth. Like the experiences of Etna, Vesuvius and Pompeii I am enshrined in the darkness that is ripened effluent. I finally make it out of the ditch, resolving to finish the process and the day. Once the new dam has subsided, I apply the clean-out patch to the pipe, mark my territory ( a poor choice of words, I am not an animal) and cover the ditch. I’ve got three shovelfuls left and some smoothing to do when my dear Susan summons me to the rear door, telephone cord fully extended. “It must be Uncle Sam,” I think. My wife, now repulsed about my newly gained attire and ‘Eau du sewer’ hands me not the phone but a towel, and some kind of disinfectant. Once I battle my way to the phone I hear Uncle ask, “How do you like plumbing so far?”