“In my professional opinion,” my plumber said after numerous efforts to auger my drain. “I think we’re stuck.” He delivered that line in a way that suggested he was trying to be funny. By being funny, I think he hoped that that line would distract me from his promise that his power auger, the auger attached to his truck never failed. “My baby hasn’t failed me yet,” he said. “Check that, once. There was one time when my baby couldn’t clear a drain, but that line was just a mess. You should’ve seen it. It was a total disaster.”
“That sounds great to me,” I said. “Because you’re the third plumber I’ve called in two years.”
“You give us [he and his baby] fifteen minutes, and we’ll fix you.”
Prior to this call, I’ve always called the mom-and-pop operations. I think they have employees who are, generally speaking, devoted to the cause of making their operation the best in the city. I assume mom-and-pop operations are filled with hungry, skilled workers who aren’t required to upsell me on products I don’t really need. My frustrations with the little guys inability to clear my drain long term led me to call a Big Guy who had a never-fails power auger attached to his truck. His Big Guy company had a well-known, decades old reputation, and all the Big Guy guarantees that Big Guys offer. I was so frustrated and desperate, and this Big Guy told me everything I wanted to hear. He assured me that “We will fix your mess for good.”
Most plumbers, big and small, do their job as if it’s a job. They often go from A to Z without changing expressions, and they don’t offer customers like me any of their personalties. This guy, a young twenty something, wasn’t burned out yet. He was not only a confident man, he appeared to really enjoy doing what he did.
I was also impressed when this employee of a big chain in our state informed me that his power auger could make a quick process of it, and that went against everything I heard. Everyone from the tree experts I talked to, to the plumbers who attempted to manually snake this drain before told me that the silver maple leaf tree in my lawn was the worst possible tree a homeowner could have when it comes to plumbing. Our silver maple leaf was about sixty-feet tall, and the previous plumber informed me that that means it probably goes just as far, if not further, down, “And as I’m sure you can guess, a sixty-foot tree does not go straight down,” one of the little guys informed me, before he temporarily cleared my drain. “It builds itself a foundation by spreading outwards infiltrating and corrupting everything in its way.” I told this Big Guy everything the little guys told me, but he insisted that his truck’s power auger would make easy work of this task.
“Just watch,” he said with his finger on the switch that powered the power auger connected, via cable, to a motor on his truck. “Just watch!” he shouted as it powered to life.
And I was finally happy, relieved, and even a little excited with the surprising progress the Big Guy auger initially made. After about forty minutes, he and I shared a smile amidst the evidence of that auger’s progress lining my basement in the form of piles of debris on newspapers scattered throughout. The debris consisted of numerous examples of the silver maple leaf’s roots, twigs, and massive amounts of dirt that I assumed followed the twigs out of the drain.
“Well,” I said, looking down at those piles. “It should be easier to work through now that all of this dirt is wet?”
“You’re kidding, right?” he said looking down at the mounds of debris. “There is some dirt in there, no doubt, but most of that is not dirt.”
I looked at him in confusion for about half a beat, until it dawned on me what he was saying about the composition of those piles of dirt. I, initially, considered that apt description quite embarrassing, and the plumber saw that embarrassment and smiled. After bathing in that embarrassment for about two seconds, I said, “Wait a second, isn’t that what we’re supposed to have in there?”
“Sure,” he conceded, “but it’s not all dirt.”
The plumber’s confidence in his power auger turned out to be false bravado, as evidenced by the fact that the effort he and his power auger put into clearing the line failed to clear 100% of my drain. He and his power auger cleared 98% of it, but there was an annoying clump that he couldn’t clear the cleanout hole in our basement.
After repeated efforts to assist the power auger, he flipped the switch off and attempted to physically free the line of his power auger from the cleanout portal in our basement. There was one final chunk of the “not all dirt” filth that couldn’t make it over the lip of the drain cleanout. He didn’t say a word regarding his power auger’s failure, and how this might be the second time he and the auger failed. He simply went manual, and he said he was “So close. Look at it.” He added the latter pulling the filth to the fore.
It was frustrating, of course, but even in the midst of frustrations, we all find a way to laugh. “It looks like a rodent popping its head in and out of a hole,” he said. He put forth a few valiant efforts, but they eventually, physically drained him. His hopelessness led him to call the home office. When they said they didn’t have anyone in the area who was available to assist him, he put out personal calls to his professional colleagues. After they didn’t answer numerous calls, he called the home office back for advice.
“I hate to ask you this,” he said, turning to me in a peak of frustration. “And I’ve never done this before, and I’m sure my colleagues would frown at this, but … would you mind helping me here?” After I agreed to do just that, he added, “I think the two of us should be able do this together, don’t you?” He put me on the lead, and he said he would be pulling the auger from behind. He said something about the art of tug-of-war, and how he would be like the anchor, the guy at the end of the rope, who usually does most of the work. I agreed with that analogy, and I was already to start when he stopped me. “Before we begin, let me say two things. I want you to pull as hard as you can, but when I say stop. Stop!”
He asked me to look at him when he said this, and he asked me to repeat that line to assure him that I understood the importance of stopping. I repeated his instructions dutifully. As I began to pull, however, I began to make significant progress. It became pretty obvious to both of us that I, an ordinary citizen with no professional training, was making more progress than a certified plumber from a Big Guy corporation. I was proud. I was even more proud when he stopped pulling from behind, as I considered that a compliment to not only the progress I made but to my surprising strength. That was my ego talking, of course, but when he said, “I think you’re getting it,” that fueled me to put every ounce of strength I had into it.
I don’t know about anyone else, but when another fella tells me that I’m displaying feats of strength beyond his own, it invigorates me. When I’m outdoing a professional at his own profession, I try to live up to that compliment and expound upon it. As I sought to expound upon it, the primary source of our concern appeared in the sewer cleanout fitting built into the wall of our basement. I got excited. I thought I was accomplishing something huge, but the plumber informed me that working it through the fitting was often the hardest part. I had this in mind, coupled with the progress I made, and I decided to show him how strong I actually was. My first couple pulls were somewhat cautious, as I awaited the instruction to stop, and the glop continued to pop up to the lip and drop back in to continue our “rodent popping out of a hole to torment its predator” analogy.
After those first couple of tantalizing pulls failed, I let the snake go slack and regrouped for one final pull. I inhaled and grabbed ahold of snake line, with the no-slip grip gloves he provided, and I put everything I had into that one final pull.
“Stop!” the plumber shouted, too late.
The mass, that was not dirt, intertwined with silver maple leaf roots, finally made it through the closeout fitting. Its release, combined with the force of my pull, caused me to fall backward until I was flat on my back. The result of that flat fall not only prevented the mass that was not dirt from hitting me, but it put me in a perfect position to watch the mass fly up over my toes, my body, and my head.
I remember this occurring in slow motion, but as anyone with a fundamental understanding of physics knows, this did not happen in slow motion, and what goes up must come down. Yet, the glop did not go up by a significant measure, and it did not come down. It shot almost flat across the room, so fast, that I didn’t have time to see the glop hit the plumber in the face. I didn’t expect it to hit the plumber in the face, of course, as I didn’t know its trajectory in reference to the plumber, so I didn’t wonder if the plumber failed to duck, or if it happened so fast that he didn’t have time to, but we have to assume the latter. Regardless what his reaction was, most of the glop that was not dirt landed square on his face, dirtying his nose and eyeglasses.
I heard a disgusted “Uh!” before I turned to see what caused it. When I turned to see the mess on his face, it took him about as long as it did me to completely digest what just happened. Once he did, the “Uh!” turned into a series of expletives. One of those expletives could adequately describe some of material that was not dirt, now on his face. He blamed me for not stopping when he told me to, he blamed himself for not having the patience to wait for a professional colleague to assist him, and he displayed some anger at the world, in general, for a moment. Throughout this understandable tirade, the plumber did not wipe the glop from his face. He just stared at me, and with me, in mutual disgust for what just happened.
“This is, by far, the most disgusting thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said after he cooled down a little, “and I’m sure you can appreciate that as a full-time member of this profession for six years, with a lengthy list of the most disgusting things that that could happen to a plumber, that’s a bold statement.” I considered that a great line, enhanced by the visual that he permitted me to enjoy for far too long.
Everyone loves a great line, a great, situational line that captures a moment in time better than any other. Writers probably appreciate great lines more than most, and I write that with the confidence that most people love a line like that in the moment. They might repeat that line to their spouse, the neighbor, and a few friends, but that line basically dies on the vine after that. Writers hear a line like that one, and the line I will provide at the end of this article and think, “I have to immortalize this line in an article, so others can enjoy it as much as I did.”
I wasn’t sure if he valued great, comedic lines as much as I did, but I wondered if he allowed this glop to remain on his face for as long as he did, because he thought that visual added comedic value to that line.
I don’t know what he was thinking, or if I was assigning my values to his reaction, but my guess that this plumber valued great, comedic lines almost as much as I did. Everyone wants to be funny in their own way, and most of us will make some sacrifices if we think the in-the-moment visual will help our comedic line progress from humorous to hilarious, but how many of us would allow a glop that was not all dirt to remain on our face for as long as this plumber did.
He was a plumber, you might say, and a plumber’s tolerance for “The most disgusting thing,” is higher than most. True, I admit, but coupled with that tolerance is the knowledge of the composition of these glops. They not only know what’s in there, they know what comes out. They have intimate knowledge of the germs, the complex mix of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms that live in the average drain. They probably have some of the strongest immune systems in our culture, but the experiences that led to their strong immune systems are such that they don’t want to test how strong it is. My guess is that some infinitesimal nugget below 100% of the members of the plumber profession would wipe that glop, that was not dirt, off their face as fast as possible. I’ll leave it up to the reader, as I do the listener when I tell this story, to determine why this guy allowed that glop to sit on his face for as long as he did. My characterizations are subjective, as I think everyone does everything they can to enhance and immortalize their comedic lines.
I don’t know how long the plumber allowed the glop to sit on his face, but I reached the point where I almost said, “Ok, but are you going to wipe it off?” I still can’t understand why wiping this glop off his face wasn’t such an instinctual response that he’d have most of it off within two seconds of furious wiping. I now wonder if some part of him thought he was paying homage to the great comedians who proceeded him by physically agreeing to the principle that some of the times we have to suffer for our art. Whatever his reasoning, he delivered the line that prompted me to write this article, while finally wiping the glop off his face and glasses, “All I can say, and I never thought I’d say this, but for the first time in my life I’m glad that I need glasses.”
