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!

We rolled back into our chain motel this afternoon, parched after hiking the drying reservoir of the dammed Rio Grande in the pitiless sun and relentless heat (okay, it was only 54 degrees) to find our water dribbling barely in hydrous sympathy with the Rio Gee. Why not? Everything else has gone goof, why not live a day or two waterless? The nice motel person assured me they were working on the problem when I inquired if we should seek new lodging. Of course I figured Friday night most hostels down here would have the NO Vacancy sign on. Pessimism, my new middle name….

30 minutes, my friendly motel chain Desk Lady assured me. If you know me, you KNOW I know plumbing like the back of my colon. It is NEVER 30 minutes!! Never!!!

So when we came in tonight after wandering the quaint town of Truth or, yes, Consequences, rest assured the water was still a pathetic dribble and people were menacing my friendly motel minimum wage scapegoat. The plumbers, she said apologetically, had experienced a ‘glitch’ but they were working valiantly to fix the problem. Two guys at the front desk were reaching Boiling Point, but I said, as a possible wall against violence, ‘that sounds good to me. Thanks!’ 20 minutes, she assured the mob. The two gentlemen weren’t buying it, but I said genially, ‘No rush’ and waltzed back to my room here.

20 minutes my ass!! One plumber was napping behind the wheel of their box truck when we drove out 3 hours ago. A bad sign, I commented. For all I know the siesta is ongoing. But as I mentioned, I’ve accepted the fate that drives this trip, Vaya con Dios. There are worse things than a toilet that won’t flush or shower that no longer works or a sink that gurgles nasty when turned on. No doubt they are waiting down the road….