Pipe Dream

My dad was a fireman, and a plumber and  electrician on his days off. He did some freelance jobs in Beverly Hills when I was growing up, and we're told he had some pretty good stories. He wasn't very good at sharing those tales with me and my sisters.  We are still finding out some fun stuff about him, and he's been dead a long time. But that's for another blog. I want to talk about plumbing.

In the mechanical walk through on our townhome we're  selling,  an inspector found minor leaks under two sinks, and we decided we could handle those ourselves. I even have something called a plumbers wrench I'd inherited. How tough could it be?

I may have inherited the wrench, but not the skill, inclination, patience, or passion to plumb. There are a few reasons for that. One, my dad would often take me with him on plumbing jobs and give me actual work to do.  These were tasks like digging ditches, and crawling into tight little crawl spaces to check for leaks, things like that.  I didn't get to do any of the 20 dollar an hour (big money in those days) duties. I wasn't imagining myself in a big brick house on five acres with the money I'd made digging ditches.

My other problem came into play today.  I am not afraid of heights. I've worked with a safety rope inside a 200 foot flour elevator. I've flown in just about every category of aircraft you can imagine. I flew tandem with the national glider distance champion. (we very nearly ended up landing in a pig sty.) I was the  first reporter in this town to try out the ride where they put you in a harness, pull you two hundred feet into the air, and then have you pull a cord that launches you out into space.

I Love speed. I've been on the back of a racing motorcycle with one of the top racer, drivers in the country. I've been on a practice run with the National Trans Am champ. I've experienced six "G"s in a Chinese Mig.

But put me on my back in a crawl space, or under a sink with a plumber's wrench, and you've found yourself a claustrophobic, clutzy, violent, irrational mass of human flesh. That's what happened today. Maybe it was all those trips into crawl spaces when I was still young enough to be freaked out by spiders. Maybe it was the musty odor  I kicked up as I crawled on my back in the loose soil. Maybe it was the time Dad took me to the plumbing shop to pick up some pipe during a union strike. This guy came toward us who, from my perspective, looked 8 feet tall, and 900 pounds.  Dad says, "Get down under the dash, stay there, and don't say anything."

You mean say something like, "Holy........?

For some reason Dad was able to convince "Andre the Giant" he was not a scab. He talked his way out of the confrontation, and then several minutes later remembered where he'd stuffed me. That memory is solid. 

So anyway, the few times I've been forced into coping with pipes, I've discovered a whole new language. These were words I didn't even know I knew. Who would have thought that words like "traps," "washers," "leaks," would attract such interesting adjectives.

It's fortunate for me and the community at large that plumbing did not become my career choice. Maybe it would have been different if I could have gone on one of those Beverley Hills jobs. 

So if you've got a leak, and you were thinking about calling your old pal Paul? Think again. By contrast, the 200 dollar an hour bill you're going to get  will be well worth it.