The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Mama said there’d be days like this. You get up on a sunny hopeful morn, you take your shower, brush your teeth, wash the breakfast dishes, toss in a load of laundry, help yourself to another cup of joe. You’re psyched for another day in the mine, just glad to be alive. You go back in the bathroom, get rid of those first two cups of caffeine … and hear the sink gurgling like a bad gargle. Odd, you think. The kitchen sink chimes in, a drain duet. Then you noticed the toilet water isn’t going down, it’s coming up!

What the …? And then you find the bathtub filling up … with … omigod! With what should never be in your bathtub.

Who ya gonna call? Crapbusters? Being a modern South Ender, I postpone my optimism and pull the shades down on the mocking sun. Ain’t no sunshine when the sewage comes home to roost, trust me. Then I go to my computer and google up Invasion of the Turds, pass up the first ads and go to the How-To and You-Tube and the Suicide Hotline. I pick the How-To. The Hotline will come later, I’m half certain, but it’s a last resort. I have the internet — I have a global support team.

I’m no novice to this plumbing paradox, I pretty much know the bad news that’s coming. I’m just hoping to find a glimmer of hope, some yahoo who sez check the toilet float, jiggle it, you’ll be good to go. My ‘team’ focuses instead on more likely and infinitely worse diagnoses: a plugged sewer line, a ruined drainfield or a full septic tank. Pick yer poison! The tank was pumped recently so I’m down to 2 options. I choose the only one I can fix myself — the line.

That was yesterday. I started at the tank and dug down, found the line a few feet down, then trenched back toward the house. An old growth forsythia thwarted my forward progress. I sawed it off, whacked at its roots, chained it to my truck and jerked it out like a bad wisdom tooth. Sure I felt bad. For me! Its roots were what had clogged my line where the pipes had broken. Iron to clay to PVC. It was like an archeological dig through plumbing eras, Roman to modern.

Today I joined the new pipes, ran some serious water as a test then filled the grave. I tell you, there’s a damn good reason to keep the old outhouse!

Jason Rasmussen owns Camano Plumbing and advertises in the phone book listings with a subheading that reads: “We Fix Your Do-It-Yourself Mistakes”. Back when we were both newbies to the island and D-I-Y guyz ourselves, Jason eventually decided all his mistakes added up to on-the-job training, practically an advanced degree in plumbingology and to some degree, but not an accredited one, I suppose he was his own apprentice over the years. My suspicion is that when he built his house and plumbed it himself, he figured the time was right for an entrepreneurial act of courage.

Plumbing, I will attest, is not a trade for the weak of heart. The gods of plumbing are cruel and implacable. They set traps for the faint of heart, ruin marriages, corrode confidence and turn what might seem an easy project into endless warfare. Jason, apparently, even after ruptured pipes, plugged toilets and ruined dishwashers destroyed by dropped silverware, has steeled himself for the battle. He is the Galahad that will slay the dragon that you, the unprepared D-I-Y homeowner who thought installing a sink faucet would be child’s play, instead came face to face, tooth to tooth, claw to claw with nothing you could ever have imagined. A few days without running water and multiple trips to the nearest hardware store, the disgusted looks from the woman who no longer loves you, sure, it’s maybe time to call Jason at Camano Plumbing. At this point Jason will tell me (but not you) money is no object. What matters is returning again to what was once Civilization. Running water, hot and cold, toilets that flush, indoor plumbing, sinks that drain, all those ‘conveniences’ that are not conveniences, they’re necessities.

Over a few beers at the Pilot Lounge, Jason will confess that he’s still basically training on the job. “Plumbing’s a bitch,” (his unofficial subheading), he’ll confess, “but at least now when I screw up, I get to charge the customer.” I laugh, order another round and always say I should’ve gone into the trades. “Always room for competition,” he invariably replies. “Just another screw-up I can fix.” Sadly, I know it’s true.