Sunday, November 8, 1981
My House Was Always Wet
Faucets dripped.
Gutters overflowed.
The old roof, Vermont slate, leaked.
The two toilets, mysterious machines,
ran, whistled, gurgled, clunked in the night.
Drains backed up with smelly gray suds.
Cellar walls weeped.
Pipes shrieked.
If I took a shower upstairs,
downstairs a water stain
grew on Granma's ceiling.
Once after an extra long shower
("What were you doing in that shower, boy?")
Granma's ceiling
collapsed.
My father was no plumber.
Once he broke a china sink.
Ripped a hole in a bedroom wall,
then didn't come home at all, at all.
Doors grew mildew, ceilings grew mold.
Floor joists quietly rotted.
My own sprouting body grew fungus
in places I didn't dare mention.
Sister moved across the sea;
Brother, to the coast;
Granma, to the hospital
and gave up the ghost.
I, too, traveled far
though moisture haunted
my every move:
sweating palms,
saliva of lips,
teardrops and their salty tracks,
juice of genitals, flood of birth,
milk of breast… The house
was leaking love, my friend,
and no pipe ever
brought it back.
Now Grown
Now grown,
in a dripping house of my own,
being plumber and father combined,
why don’t we have love
most all of the time?
Showing posts with label Joe the Other Plumber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe the Other Plumber. Show all posts
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
365 Jobs: An Embarrassing Moment
October 4, 1984
An Embarrassing Moment
Mild stomach flu but a full day’s labor:
pipes soldered, drywall patched. Done.
Motoring home in my pickup
among the mansions of Atherton
after dark, without warning I
suddenly need to — immediately —
must absolutely at this moment
take an extreme
crap.
Stop the truck. Out.
In front of a vast estate I squat behind a
RONALD REAGAN FOR PRESIDENT
lawn sign and let fly
among some pumpkins.
As I rebuckle beside
the steaming puddle,
lights come on flooding
the garden while an alarm
starts blatting and a dark dog is
running. A man is shouting
through the glare but I’m gone
and accelerating while the dog chases
my left rear wheel so I never hear
the words but maybe the man is thanking me
for the fertilizer or exhorting me to vote for Ron.
I regret missing his
statement having already
made mine.
An Embarrassing Moment
Mild stomach flu but a full day’s labor:
pipes soldered, drywall patched. Done.
Motoring home in my pickup
among the mansions of Atherton
after dark, without warning I
suddenly need to — immediately —
must absolutely at this moment
take an extreme
crap.
Stop the truck. Out.
In front of a vast estate I squat behind a
RONALD REAGAN FOR PRESIDENT
lawn sign and let fly
among some pumpkins.
As I rebuckle beside
the steaming puddle,
lights come on flooding
the garden while an alarm
starts blatting and a dark dog is
running. A man is shouting
through the glare but I’m gone
and accelerating while the dog chases
my left rear wheel so I never hear
the words but maybe the man is thanking me
for the fertilizer or exhorting me to vote for Ron.
I regret missing his
statement having already
made mine.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
365 Jobs: First Birthday
Monday, October 10, 1977
First Birthday
Today is October 10, 1977. Exactly one year ago at 9 a.m., my son was born. Today at 9 a.m. I meet a bosomy woman named Nina at a fixer-upper in Palo Alto. She wants me to relocate a sink and replace a toilet. First thing I do, exploring, is wiggle a hot water pipe, which breaks off in my hand, flooding the kitchen and bathroom before I find the shutoff. Luke, the old carpenter working there, says, "An inauspicious beginning." He has a Canadian accent: in-ow-spicious.
Luke is a chatty old nut who looks like a professor wearing a tool belt. As it turns out, I'm not far off.
Luke tells dirty jokes and has a poor boys' view of authority. He got married in Tahoe just last Saturday — to Nina. He grew up poor in Saskatoon. He worked in the Royal Canadian Mounted motor pool but decided he could better himself, so he took an RCMP test whose results indicated that he should stay in the motor pool. Instead, he went to college, and nine years later he had a Ph.D. in genetics. "Tests are crap," he says.
Luke worked under Dr. Norman Shumway, the pioneering heart transplant surgeon at Stanford. "I'm a handy scientist," Luke says, "which is a useful and rare commodity." He takes off from time to time to fix up houses, which is how he met the top-heavy Nina. "It's a match made in heaven," Luke says. "My brains, her obvious and abundant fertility — we'll conquer the world." Luke does not lack in self-esteem. Nor in breast-worship.
With the profits they'll make from this fixer-upper, they'll move to British Columbia where Luke will work in the Immunology Department at UBC — in the Lung Unit, he says, coughing (he chain-smokes) — while Nina starts having his babies. "I don't want my DNA to disappear," Luke says. "I want to replicate."
I wish his genetic material the best of luck. I go home to my first son's first birthday. At one year old, he walks, climbs, barks, and babbles. He likes scrambled eggs, PB&J, beer (it was an accident, one-time), and Cheerios. He likes dogs, sticks, tennis balls, his red fire engine, telephones (he eats them), and wastebaskets (he ransacks them). It's a lot like having a puppy in the house. He’s healthy and strong and cute as a button with big brown eyes and soft brown hair. He likes to sit in his easy chair and kick his feet up just like the old man. Replication.
Miranda, our midwife, is supposed to join us for dinner. At last she shows up after we call to remind her. My son by this time is asleep. "Sorry," Miranda says, and she explains why she's distracted. It's complicated: She has a boyfriend named Theo. Theo is married to a woman named Sunflower. Theo and Sunflower have a child with Down syndrome.
Sunflower flipped out after the birth. She went in and out of hospitals while Theo cared for the baby. Sunflower started seeing a shrink who gave her "the acid treatment" (LSD), which changed her from mildly freaked to totally psychotic — hiding in corners, babbling. So this same shrink sent Sunflower back east for months of electroshock treatments. You have to wonder if he slept with her, too, since he did everything else wrong. Then Sunflower disappeared. For months.
At last Sunflower showed up at her parents' house in Florida. Sunflower's parents have a good deal of money. With a court order they removed their granddaughter from Theo's care in California and took her to Florida. Theo without funds was powerless to fight them.
One thing revealed in Sunflower’s flipping out was that her father had sexually molested her as a child. Now this man was caring for Ami, the sweet-natured girl with Down syndrome. Theo tried to visit Ami in Florida. The parents wouldn’t let him see the child.
A year passed. Miranda met Theo, and they fell in love. Sunflower became a fundamentalist Christian and converted her parents. Theo and Miranda went to Florida together and tried to get the fundamentalist minister to arrange a meeting with the grandparents. They got nowhere. So they spied on Sunflower’s folks and learned their routines. By this time Sunflower had split for months, no one knew where.
They decided to kidnap Ami. The first plan was for a Sunday when the folks went to church. It didn’t work — they never had an opening. Kidnapping isn't so easy. The next plan was for a school day. Theo walked to the elementary school. Miranda waited two blocks away with a rental car at a phone booth. She waited. And waited. Then she panicked. She went to the school and said she was from Missouri and wanted to observe how they did it here. She walked around blabbering nonsense but couldn’t find Theo or Ami. Finally Miranda saw them walking along the sidewalk outside. Miranda made excuses and ran. She followed Theo until they got to the car where they changed clothes and drove to Palm Beach and caught a plane, Miranda keeping Ami while Theo flew separately on the theory they’d look for Theo. They changed planes in Saint Louis, calling the folks to tell them they've got Ami. The grandmother says, "It’s God’s will." The grandmother then apologized — she never wanted Ami but Sunflower talked her into it.
As far as Miranda can tell, there's no evidence that the grandfather molested Ami, but now the girl cries whenever she has to go to bathroom, which she never did before.
"I'm sorry," Miranda says, "you didn't need to hear all this."
"It's okay," I say. "I think you needed to say all this. I'm kind of amazed you showed up at all. When did all this happen?"
"We just got back yesterday." She looks in on my son, who is curled up in the crib with his froggy blanket. There is adoration in Miranda's eyes. She helped bring my son into the world. It's her vocation. Her passion. "We just keep creating these amazing children," she says. "What else can we do?"
First Birthday
Today is October 10, 1977. Exactly one year ago at 9 a.m., my son was born. Today at 9 a.m. I meet a bosomy woman named Nina at a fixer-upper in Palo Alto. She wants me to relocate a sink and replace a toilet. First thing I do, exploring, is wiggle a hot water pipe, which breaks off in my hand, flooding the kitchen and bathroom before I find the shutoff. Luke, the old carpenter working there, says, "An inauspicious beginning." He has a Canadian accent: in-ow-spicious.
Luke is a chatty old nut who looks like a professor wearing a tool belt. As it turns out, I'm not far off.
Luke tells dirty jokes and has a poor boys' view of authority. He got married in Tahoe just last Saturday — to Nina. He grew up poor in Saskatoon. He worked in the Royal Canadian Mounted motor pool but decided he could better himself, so he took an RCMP test whose results indicated that he should stay in the motor pool. Instead, he went to college, and nine years later he had a Ph.D. in genetics. "Tests are crap," he says.
Luke worked under Dr. Norman Shumway, the pioneering heart transplant surgeon at Stanford. "I'm a handy scientist," Luke says, "which is a useful and rare commodity." He takes off from time to time to fix up houses, which is how he met the top-heavy Nina. "It's a match made in heaven," Luke says. "My brains, her obvious and abundant fertility — we'll conquer the world." Luke does not lack in self-esteem. Nor in breast-worship.
With the profits they'll make from this fixer-upper, they'll move to British Columbia where Luke will work in the Immunology Department at UBC — in the Lung Unit, he says, coughing (he chain-smokes) — while Nina starts having his babies. "I don't want my DNA to disappear," Luke says. "I want to replicate."
I wish his genetic material the best of luck. I go home to my first son's first birthday. At one year old, he walks, climbs, barks, and babbles. He likes scrambled eggs, PB&J, beer (it was an accident, one-time), and Cheerios. He likes dogs, sticks, tennis balls, his red fire engine, telephones (he eats them), and wastebaskets (he ransacks them). It's a lot like having a puppy in the house. He’s healthy and strong and cute as a button with big brown eyes and soft brown hair. He likes to sit in his easy chair and kick his feet up just like the old man. Replication.
Miranda, our midwife, is supposed to join us for dinner. At last she shows up after we call to remind her. My son by this time is asleep. "Sorry," Miranda says, and she explains why she's distracted. It's complicated: She has a boyfriend named Theo. Theo is married to a woman named Sunflower. Theo and Sunflower have a child with Down syndrome.
Sunflower flipped out after the birth. She went in and out of hospitals while Theo cared for the baby. Sunflower started seeing a shrink who gave her "the acid treatment" (LSD), which changed her from mildly freaked to totally psychotic — hiding in corners, babbling. So this same shrink sent Sunflower back east for months of electroshock treatments. You have to wonder if he slept with her, too, since he did everything else wrong. Then Sunflower disappeared. For months.
At last Sunflower showed up at her parents' house in Florida. Sunflower's parents have a good deal of money. With a court order they removed their granddaughter from Theo's care in California and took her to Florida. Theo without funds was powerless to fight them.
One thing revealed in Sunflower’s flipping out was that her father had sexually molested her as a child. Now this man was caring for Ami, the sweet-natured girl with Down syndrome. Theo tried to visit Ami in Florida. The parents wouldn’t let him see the child.
A year passed. Miranda met Theo, and they fell in love. Sunflower became a fundamentalist Christian and converted her parents. Theo and Miranda went to Florida together and tried to get the fundamentalist minister to arrange a meeting with the grandparents. They got nowhere. So they spied on Sunflower’s folks and learned their routines. By this time Sunflower had split for months, no one knew where.
They decided to kidnap Ami. The first plan was for a Sunday when the folks went to church. It didn’t work — they never had an opening. Kidnapping isn't so easy. The next plan was for a school day. Theo walked to the elementary school. Miranda waited two blocks away with a rental car at a phone booth. She waited. And waited. Then she panicked. She went to the school and said she was from Missouri and wanted to observe how they did it here. She walked around blabbering nonsense but couldn’t find Theo or Ami. Finally Miranda saw them walking along the sidewalk outside. Miranda made excuses and ran. She followed Theo until they got to the car where they changed clothes and drove to Palm Beach and caught a plane, Miranda keeping Ami while Theo flew separately on the theory they’d look for Theo. They changed planes in Saint Louis, calling the folks to tell them they've got Ami. The grandmother says, "It’s God’s will." The grandmother then apologized — she never wanted Ami but Sunflower talked her into it.
As far as Miranda can tell, there's no evidence that the grandfather molested Ami, but now the girl cries whenever she has to go to bathroom, which she never did before.
"I'm sorry," Miranda says, "you didn't need to hear all this."
"It's okay," I say. "I think you needed to say all this. I'm kind of amazed you showed up at all. When did all this happen?"
"We just got back yesterday." She looks in on my son, who is curled up in the crib with his froggy blanket. There is adoration in Miranda's eyes. She helped bring my son into the world. It's her vocation. Her passion. "We just keep creating these amazing children," she says. "What else can we do?"
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
365 Jobs: The Class System
Wednesday, April 16, 1986The Class System
Mrs. E speaks with a British accent and carries herself with a royal air. Her lavishly landscaped yard has a swimming pool fed by a waterfall that splashes from stacked rocks and ferns. She has a view of the entire Silicon Valley.
I’m repairing a leak under her sink. Her husband had worked on it. Why oh why is this billionaire doing his own plumbing?
Mrs. E asks, "Did my husband totally botch it?"
"Um, it's just, I think it would be better to replace the entire drain assembly."
"You're very tactful." She laughs. "Where do you live?"
“La Honda," I say, which is like saying I live on the poor side of the mountain.
“I like La Honda," she says kindly. "It has such pretty views.”
“You’re not doing too bad, either,” I say. It sounds wrong and immediately there's a chill, like I’m envying her obvious financial success. "Your views," I say too late. "You have pretty views, too."
"Yes," says Mrs. E. And that's the end of chatting.
Her husband can't do plumbing, and I can't make small talk with a billionairess. We both have limits to our expertise. But I like it that he tries. I'll keep trying, too.
The waterfall, I decide, is too tidy. Too obviously placed there. Lacking nature’s artlessness. But then, I'm no expert.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
365 Jobs: The Moment After
Monday, November 21, 1994
The Moment After
Numb from the crawl space,
the weight of wrenches, the suck of mud,
the cruel finger-scrape of crusty gas pipe,
I open the cock, dimly aware of
a hoo-oo-ooting sound as wearily, stupidly
to relight the pilot I strike a match and
WHOOSH
a roaring comet of fire shoots across the garage
knocking me back like a high inside fastball.
Fast as flame the body moves
before the mind reacts:
I shut the cock.
The moment after
in stillness
my right arm is smoking.
The moment after
from my sizzled beard
the scent of singed hair.
The moment after
from my lip
the taste of ash.
The moment after
like a wild river
blood throbs through my heart.
Lungs expand with the rush of air.
Before pain can muster,
in the moment after
I have senses, spirit;
the soul burns,
my love, blessed
to the quick
with life.
The Moment After
Numb from the crawl space,
the weight of wrenches, the suck of mud,
the cruel finger-scrape of crusty gas pipe,
I open the cock, dimly aware of
a hoo-oo-ooting sound as wearily, stupidly
to relight the pilot I strike a match and
WHOOSH
a roaring comet of fire shoots across the garage
knocking me back like a high inside fastball.
Fast as flame the body moves
before the mind reacts:
I shut the cock.
The moment after
in stillness
my right arm is smoking.
The moment after
from my sizzled beard
the scent of singed hair.
The moment after
from my lip
the taste of ash.
The moment after
like a wild river
blood throbs through my heart.
Lungs expand with the rush of air.
Before pain can muster,
in the moment after
I have senses, spirit;
the soul burns,
my love, blessed
to the quick
with life.
Monday, February 25, 2013
365 Jobs: Handyman Sketches: An American Dream
Don't Blame Me, I'm Just Here to Fix the Garbage Disposal: Part Ten
An American Dream: Thursday, May 14, 1987
Replace another dishwasher. Hot day again.
Carrying out the old one I heave it up
to the dumpster — by myself —
and feel a POP
in my spine.
Why do I lift dishwashers?
Here's why:
Ice strapped to my back,
I squat stiffly with pangs
as I tuck in my five-year-old. He says,
“I don’t like to go to bed because sometimes I have dreams.”
“Everybody dreams," I say. "Every night.”
He: “Once I had a bad dream. It was called The American Dream.”
Me: “Oh really? What was it about?”
He: “It was at the beach. There
were all these bright color rocks.
When you look closely at them, you can see little aminals."
(That's what he calls them: aminals.)
"A big wave came.
It was so big, it followed us home.
It went up one side of a hill and down
the other side into another ocean.”
Me: “Why was that called The American Dream?”
He: “I don’t know. That’s what it said it was in the dream.”
I have a dream, many nights, which I don’t tell my son:
I’m walking naked down a crowded sidewalk.
Nobody notices. Nobody cares.
That’s the writer’s bad dream. It comes true.
We share love, myself and this boy.
That’s why I lift dishwashers.
We dream. Sometimes badly. But we dream.
Note: Among my contracting jobs, for many years I've served as the on-call handyman for a group of townhouse-style apartments — or rental units — or whatever one should call an enclosed square of two-story dwellings in a subdivision of Sunnyvale, California. It's steady money. As a minor league writer, I need that.
I tried to summarize the experience in prose, but verse seems to work best. Most of the events took place in the 1980s though a few are more recent. This is Part Ten of a series.
An American Dream: Thursday, May 14, 1987
Replace another dishwasher. Hot day again.
Carrying out the old one I heave it up
to the dumpster — by myself —
and feel a POP
in my spine.
Why do I lift dishwashers?
Here's why:
Ice strapped to my back,
I squat stiffly with pangs
as I tuck in my five-year-old. He says,
“I don’t like to go to bed because sometimes I have dreams.”
“Everybody dreams," I say. "Every night.”
He: “Once I had a bad dream. It was called The American Dream.”
Me: “Oh really? What was it about?”
He: “It was at the beach. There
were all these bright color rocks.
When you look closely at them, you can see little aminals."
(That's what he calls them: aminals.)
"A big wave came.
It was so big, it followed us home.
It went up one side of a hill and down
the other side into another ocean.”
Me: “Why was that called The American Dream?”
He: “I don’t know. That’s what it said it was in the dream.”
I have a dream, many nights, which I don’t tell my son:
I’m walking naked down a crowded sidewalk.
Nobody notices. Nobody cares.
That’s the writer’s bad dream. It comes true.
We share love, myself and this boy.
That’s why I lift dishwashers.
We dream. Sometimes badly. But we dream.
Note: Among my contracting jobs, for many years I've served as the on-call handyman for a group of townhouse-style apartments — or rental units — or whatever one should call an enclosed square of two-story dwellings in a subdivision of Sunnyvale, California. It's steady money. As a minor league writer, I need that.
I tried to summarize the experience in prose, but verse seems to work best. Most of the events took place in the 1980s though a few are more recent. This is Part Ten of a series.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
The Kidnapped Handyman
I love this story: a handyman installed a water heater, didn't get
paid by the landlord, then repossessed the heater. The son of a tenant
beat up the handyman, forced him to perform additional work, then
kidnapped him. After kidnapping the handyman, the kidnapper stopped for
gas at a minimart and got into an argument with the cashier about a bag
of trail mix. While they argued, the handyman escaped. And that's not
even the weird part...
It's all here, in a hilarious column by Scott Herhold of the San Jose Mercury News.
Reminds me of a dispute I had over a recirculating pump for a water heater: The Bill (Part Two). I actually tried to kill a client by giving him a heart attack.
People, please pay your handymen. We get a little upset when we feel we're being stiffed.
Sometimes things just get out of control.
It's all here, in a hilarious column by Scott Herhold of the San Jose Mercury News.Reminds me of a dispute I had over a recirculating pump for a water heater: The Bill (Part Two). I actually tried to kill a client by giving him a heart attack.
People, please pay your handymen. We get a little upset when we feel we're being stiffed.
Sometimes things just get out of control.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
365 Jobs: The Karma of Plumbing
May 1979 to November 1989
Some background: In May of 1979 I installed a gas cooktop for a man named Greg who had an incredible estate in Los Altos. He had a tennis court, pool, brick walkways, a lovely wife, two blond munchkins, a golden retriever, and a mansion covered with ivy. He was a Xerox salesman, and he must have sold those copiers by the truckload.
I had to extend a gas pipe the entire length of the house through the crawlspace. When I finished late in the day, Greg asked if I would double-check all the fittings because his wife was terrified of leaks.
I was charging by the hour, so the longer the job lasted, the more I earned. But… I was exhausted. Crawling the length of that house was like doing 62 pushups. Already on the first pass I'd connected each joint firmly and tightly.
"I already double-checked," I lied. Unforgivable. I never lie. And yet I lied. Exhaustion is no excuse.
Half a year later in October of 1979 I got a call from Greg. He was furious. After continually, faintly smelling gas he'd called a plumber named Bruno to check it out. "Bruno said you did it all wrong."
"Could I talk to Bruno?"
Greg gave me the number. I called Bruno and asked what I had done wrong.
Bruno had a German accent: "One of the joints was wrapped in Teflon tape. You can't use Teflon on gas pipe."
"I know I can't do that. Just one joint?"
"That's right."
"You told him I did everything wrong."
"I may have exaggerated."
I never use Teflon tape, so I don't know how I happened to use it there, but anyway Bruno had charged more to fix that one mistake than I had charged to plumb the entire line. Greg hadn't asked for reimbursement — I think he just wanted to yell at me — but I sent him a refund check: a day's pay. A day of crawling, for nothing.
Could've been worse. At least I didn't blow up the place.
More background: Eight years later, in 1987 I remodeled a kitchen for a depressed, and depressing, woman named Jacqueline M. Even in her sadness, Jacqueline was a gourmet French cook. She treated me to exquisite pastries. Always stiff and formal, she'd sit straight-backed in a chair flipping through cookbooks, pouting and moping and watching me work. Probably I'm flattering myself, but she may have entertained a fantasy of boinking the plumber.
A few weeks later, Jacqueline called and told me that her kitchen had flooded. The plumber she'd called, a man named Bruno, said I'd kinked a drain line on the dishwasher, causing it to overflow and ruin her floor.
"Did he say I did it all wrong?"
"No, just the one kink. He said otherwise everything looked great."
Her insurance would cover it, so she wasn't asking for anything. She just thought I'd want to know. She didn't seem angry. Or sad. Maybe Bruno had fulfilled her fantasy. At least he wasn't badmouthing anymore.
Okay, enough background: Now it's 1989, the Monday before Thanksgiving. I get a call from a woman named Ingrid for some plumbing repair. She says I was recommended by her friend Jacqueline M. (Which makes me wonder: Are they enemies?) Ingrid has the same address, and the same last name, as Greg. Oh my gosh.
I take the job. What will happen when her husband sees me? Will he attack? Will he send me away?
When I show up, men with jackhammers are removing concrete around the swimming pool. There are soccer balls in the ivy and cleats by the door. The munchkins have grown.
Greg isn't there.
Ingrid is a touchy/bouncy type. She says a man was working on their plumbing this week, and then the shower and sink faucets stopped dead.
Jokingly I say, "What was his name? Bruno?"
"Yes. That was the man. Bruno."
Plumbing is a small world. I say, "You should make him fix this."
"I don't want him back. He said something indiscreet. About a friend."
About Jacqueline? Did they boink? I don't ask, and maybe it was just something he saw, but I'm thinking: As a plumber, you not only enter people's houses. You enter their deepest cabinets. Under the sink, behind the toilet, over the tub. You enter their lives.
Bruno entered. Then he blabbered. What an asshole.
Ingrid's shower and faucets were clogged with debris. Bruno should have flushed the line after making his repair. I say nothing about his fundamental mistake. No badmouthing. This circle is now complete.
Ingrid is delighted. She bounces up and down. "I can wash my hair!" (She already looks great.)
I leave a bill and a business card. Will her husband recognize and remember my name? We’ll see. This is Tuesday.
Wednesday night I get a call from Ingrid. The men with jackhammers shut off the water to work on the pool, and now it won't go back on. Could I come back on Friday?
Certainly.
Friday, Greg greets me at the door. I say hello. Greg says, "I had seventeen guests yesterday for Thanksgiving dinner, and no water."
He shows not a flicker of recognition. To him I'm just a generic tradesman. Which is how it is with most people. I'm the invisible plumber.
The main shutoff, a 1 ¼" gate valve, is stuck. It's surrounded at the base by a brick walkway. I tell Greg there isn't enough room to make a repair. Greg runs off and comes back with a jackhammer borrowed from the pool workers. He doesn't ask one of the workers to do it for him. He just grabs the jackhammer and blasts away. I see the key to Greg's success as a salesman: he is a man who doesn't blink at denial. He gets results. He turns his own front entry into rubble. Then he watches as I solder a ball valve into place with painstaking care.
As we stand among the wreckage, the dirt, the fragments of brick, when I turn the new handle, the sound of rushing water makes him shout: "Thank you! Thank you!" Then he looks at me closely. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
I tell him about our previous encounter of ten years ago.
He's surprised: "That was you? That son of a bitch? He had a beard. He had hair down his ass."
I'm clean-shaven at the moment. Short-haired. I'm in disguise.
Then Greg laughs. So much time has passed. "I remember now — you sent me a refund. I was amazed."
We part on good terms. Another circle, complete.
There are lessons to be learned.
Don't lie. Don't badmouth. Don't blabber.
Double-check your gas lines.
Build good karma.
Some background: In May of 1979 I installed a gas cooktop for a man named Greg who had an incredible estate in Los Altos. He had a tennis court, pool, brick walkways, a lovely wife, two blond munchkins, a golden retriever, and a mansion covered with ivy. He was a Xerox salesman, and he must have sold those copiers by the truckload.
I had to extend a gas pipe the entire length of the house through the crawlspace. When I finished late in the day, Greg asked if I would double-check all the fittings because his wife was terrified of leaks.
I was charging by the hour, so the longer the job lasted, the more I earned. But… I was exhausted. Crawling the length of that house was like doing 62 pushups. Already on the first pass I'd connected each joint firmly and tightly.
"I already double-checked," I lied. Unforgivable. I never lie. And yet I lied. Exhaustion is no excuse.
Half a year later in October of 1979 I got a call from Greg. He was furious. After continually, faintly smelling gas he'd called a plumber named Bruno to check it out. "Bruno said you did it all wrong."
"Could I talk to Bruno?"
Greg gave me the number. I called Bruno and asked what I had done wrong.
Bruno had a German accent: "One of the joints was wrapped in Teflon tape. You can't use Teflon on gas pipe."
"I know I can't do that. Just one joint?"
"That's right."
"You told him I did everything wrong."
"I may have exaggerated."
I never use Teflon tape, so I don't know how I happened to use it there, but anyway Bruno had charged more to fix that one mistake than I had charged to plumb the entire line. Greg hadn't asked for reimbursement — I think he just wanted to yell at me — but I sent him a refund check: a day's pay. A day of crawling, for nothing.
Could've been worse. At least I didn't blow up the place.
More background: Eight years later, in 1987 I remodeled a kitchen for a depressed, and depressing, woman named Jacqueline M. Even in her sadness, Jacqueline was a gourmet French cook. She treated me to exquisite pastries. Always stiff and formal, she'd sit straight-backed in a chair flipping through cookbooks, pouting and moping and watching me work. Probably I'm flattering myself, but she may have entertained a fantasy of boinking the plumber.
A few weeks later, Jacqueline called and told me that her kitchen had flooded. The plumber she'd called, a man named Bruno, said I'd kinked a drain line on the dishwasher, causing it to overflow and ruin her floor.
"Did he say I did it all wrong?"
"No, just the one kink. He said otherwise everything looked great."
Her insurance would cover it, so she wasn't asking for anything. She just thought I'd want to know. She didn't seem angry. Or sad. Maybe Bruno had fulfilled her fantasy. At least he wasn't badmouthing anymore.
Okay, enough background: Now it's 1989, the Monday before Thanksgiving. I get a call from a woman named Ingrid for some plumbing repair. She says I was recommended by her friend Jacqueline M. (Which makes me wonder: Are they enemies?) Ingrid has the same address, and the same last name, as Greg. Oh my gosh.
I take the job. What will happen when her husband sees me? Will he attack? Will he send me away?
When I show up, men with jackhammers are removing concrete around the swimming pool. There are soccer balls in the ivy and cleats by the door. The munchkins have grown.
Greg isn't there.
Ingrid is a touchy/bouncy type. She says a man was working on their plumbing this week, and then the shower and sink faucets stopped dead.
Jokingly I say, "What was his name? Bruno?"
"Yes. That was the man. Bruno."
Plumbing is a small world. I say, "You should make him fix this."
"I don't want him back. He said something indiscreet. About a friend."
About Jacqueline? Did they boink? I don't ask, and maybe it was just something he saw, but I'm thinking: As a plumber, you not only enter people's houses. You enter their deepest cabinets. Under the sink, behind the toilet, over the tub. You enter their lives.
Bruno entered. Then he blabbered. What an asshole.
Ingrid's shower and faucets were clogged with debris. Bruno should have flushed the line after making his repair. I say nothing about his fundamental mistake. No badmouthing. This circle is now complete.
Ingrid is delighted. She bounces up and down. "I can wash my hair!" (She already looks great.)
I leave a bill and a business card. Will her husband recognize and remember my name? We’ll see. This is Tuesday.
Wednesday night I get a call from Ingrid. The men with jackhammers shut off the water to work on the pool, and now it won't go back on. Could I come back on Friday?
Certainly.
Friday, Greg greets me at the door. I say hello. Greg says, "I had seventeen guests yesterday for Thanksgiving dinner, and no water."
He shows not a flicker of recognition. To him I'm just a generic tradesman. Which is how it is with most people. I'm the invisible plumber.
The main shutoff, a 1 ¼" gate valve, is stuck. It's surrounded at the base by a brick walkway. I tell Greg there isn't enough room to make a repair. Greg runs off and comes back with a jackhammer borrowed from the pool workers. He doesn't ask one of the workers to do it for him. He just grabs the jackhammer and blasts away. I see the key to Greg's success as a salesman: he is a man who doesn't blink at denial. He gets results. He turns his own front entry into rubble. Then he watches as I solder a ball valve into place with painstaking care.
As we stand among the wreckage, the dirt, the fragments of brick, when I turn the new handle, the sound of rushing water makes him shout: "Thank you! Thank you!" Then he looks at me closely. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
I tell him about our previous encounter of ten years ago.
He's surprised: "That was you? That son of a bitch? He had a beard. He had hair down his ass."
I'm clean-shaven at the moment. Short-haired. I'm in disguise.
Then Greg laughs. So much time has passed. "I remember now — you sent me a refund. I was amazed."
We part on good terms. Another circle, complete.
There are lessons to be learned.
Don't lie. Don't badmouth. Don't blabber.
Double-check your gas lines.
Build good karma.
Monday, November 26, 2012
365 Jobs: Deposit, Return
November, 1984
Caroline C. hires me to build a deck and a woodshed, replace some lights, install a faucet. She lives in a badly built but glitzy McMansion overlooking a golf course. She has three teens and five cars. The house is utter chaos.
The older daughter is watching a television movie exclaiming “Oh my God I can’t believe it — Oh my God he’s doing it — Oh my God how awful…” as a kid commits suicide on screen. She shouts for her little sister to answer the phone and only accept certain calls. For the others she’s "in the shower."
Meanwhile little sister is listening to the radio in her room, loudly.
The son is in the driveway building a go-kart when the father comes home and says, "What happened to the lawnmower?" He's a stockbroker. Mr. C. goes to the kitchen, turns on another radio — loudly — and pours bourbon into a glass.
A golf ball bounces into the driveway. As a golfer approaches, the son deliberately sets the ball on fire with an oxyacetylene torch.
A delivery truck brings a large carton, a Kohler low-boy. Caroline says it is for me: while I'm here, she wants me to replace their toilet.
The next morning a team of housecleaners has converged with vacuum and squeegee and dusters. I work around them; they work around me. Nobody else is home.
I pull the old toilet and hook up the Kohler. A sticker on the base says "Leak tested."
It leaks. Badly.
There's a crack in the bowl. Shame on Kohler. And shame on Shady Plumbing Supply for selling it. And shame on me for not noticing the crack before installing it. Multiple botch.
I call Shady, and they say they will send out a van to pick it up today, just leave it by the driveway. It's Friday. They'll deliver a new one on Monday.
The housecleaners depart at noon. I finish early, tidy up, go home.
Monday evening I call Caroline C. to ask if the toilet was delivered, and she tells me I'm fired. Further, she's deducting $95 from my bill to cover the plumber she hired to install the new toilet. Seems that Shady Plumbing decided not to pick up the toilet on Friday since they could simply get it on Monday when they delivered the new one. When Mr. and Mrs. arrived home Friday evening with Important Clients to Impress, there sat the cracked toilet — on their front steps.
"I left it by the driveway," I say.
She talks right over me. "Imagine the surprise of my guests," Caroline says, "to find a toilet at the front door. And somebody had made a, um, deposit in the bowl."
"Wasn't mine," I say.
She owes me a thousand dollars.
A week later I receive a check in the mail, full payment, no deduction. Maybe she asked her son what happened. Boys will be boys.
Caroline C. hires me to build a deck and a woodshed, replace some lights, install a faucet. She lives in a badly built but glitzy McMansion overlooking a golf course. She has three teens and five cars. The house is utter chaos.
The older daughter is watching a television movie exclaiming “Oh my God I can’t believe it — Oh my God he’s doing it — Oh my God how awful…” as a kid commits suicide on screen. She shouts for her little sister to answer the phone and only accept certain calls. For the others she’s "in the shower."
Meanwhile little sister is listening to the radio in her room, loudly.
The son is in the driveway building a go-kart when the father comes home and says, "What happened to the lawnmower?" He's a stockbroker. Mr. C. goes to the kitchen, turns on another radio — loudly — and pours bourbon into a glass.
A golf ball bounces into the driveway. As a golfer approaches, the son deliberately sets the ball on fire with an oxyacetylene torch.
A delivery truck brings a large carton, a Kohler low-boy. Caroline says it is for me: while I'm here, she wants me to replace their toilet.
The next morning a team of housecleaners has converged with vacuum and squeegee and dusters. I work around them; they work around me. Nobody else is home.
I pull the old toilet and hook up the Kohler. A sticker on the base says "Leak tested."
It leaks. Badly.
There's a crack in the bowl. Shame on Kohler. And shame on Shady Plumbing Supply for selling it. And shame on me for not noticing the crack before installing it. Multiple botch.
I call Shady, and they say they will send out a van to pick it up today, just leave it by the driveway. It's Friday. They'll deliver a new one on Monday.
The housecleaners depart at noon. I finish early, tidy up, go home.
Monday evening I call Caroline C. to ask if the toilet was delivered, and she tells me I'm fired. Further, she's deducting $95 from my bill to cover the plumber she hired to install the new toilet. Seems that Shady Plumbing decided not to pick up the toilet on Friday since they could simply get it on Monday when they delivered the new one. When Mr. and Mrs. arrived home Friday evening with Important Clients to Impress, there sat the cracked toilet — on their front steps.
"I left it by the driveway," I say.
She talks right over me. "Imagine the surprise of my guests," Caroline says, "to find a toilet at the front door. And somebody had made a, um, deposit in the bowl."
"Wasn't mine," I say.
She owes me a thousand dollars.
A week later I receive a check in the mail, full payment, no deduction. Maybe she asked her son what happened. Boys will be boys.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
365 Jobs: How to be a Fly in the Milk
An Evening in May
I'm a dinner guest among about a dozen people at a home in Palo Alto. A house down the street is owned by, let's just say, a world-famous billionaire. It's that kind of neighborhood.
My hosts have lived in this home for less than a year. It's a comfy old place with high-end conveniences tucked into a relaxed decor. Knowing my interest in houses, the husband gives me a tour before we sit down to dinner.
I scarcely know these people, though I like them instantly. I'm a guest because of relationships, though we're not related — it's complicated — and the hosts are gracious enough to include me as part of the package. Among this small group are a Federal judge, two attorneys, and a Superior Court judge.
During dessert served with an exquisite French tea, the hostess notices that I'm staring at the ceiling of the dining room. She follows my eyes. There's a circular wave in the surface, about twelve inches in diameter, like a ripple on a pond. It's subtle. There's no discoloration, no crack.
I should have looked elsewhere. I can't help it, though. I notice these things. And I know how to read drywall.
"What is it?" she asks. "Do you think the roof has a leak? Do you think the ceiling is wet?"
Standing on a (lovely) chair, touching it with a finger, I say, "It's wet. Isn't there a bathroom directly above?"
A minute later, the hostess is watching as I crawl into a space behind the shower and bath. Parting some insulation, I place my hand between joists — and my fingers feel a puddle. "Uh-oh," I say.
It's a huge bathroom with two sinks, a steambath/shower, and a separate Jacuzzi, all encased in elaborate marble slabs. "Best case," I say, "it just needs recaulking." I point to some areas of peeling sealant. "Worst case, you need to repair or replace the Jacuzzi, which would require pulling out all this marble."
"Who do I call?" she asks.
This is exactly the kind of job that used to be my specialty: too small to interest the big contractors but too complicated for a handyman. With my bad back, I just can't do it anymore. Unfortunately, the only tradesmen I'm familiar with are people who lack the plumbing skills or else lack the, uh, social delicacy to work for such high-end clients.
"Well, thanks for looking," she says.
Back at the dining table, all eyes keep checking the ring on the ceiling. "I wonder if it will collapse on me," says the Federal judge sitting directly underneath.
I whisper to my wife: "I don't think they'll ever invite me again."
I'm a dinner guest among about a dozen people at a home in Palo Alto. A house down the street is owned by, let's just say, a world-famous billionaire. It's that kind of neighborhood.
My hosts have lived in this home for less than a year. It's a comfy old place with high-end conveniences tucked into a relaxed decor. Knowing my interest in houses, the husband gives me a tour before we sit down to dinner.
I scarcely know these people, though I like them instantly. I'm a guest because of relationships, though we're not related — it's complicated — and the hosts are gracious enough to include me as part of the package. Among this small group are a Federal judge, two attorneys, and a Superior Court judge.
During dessert served with an exquisite French tea, the hostess notices that I'm staring at the ceiling of the dining room. She follows my eyes. There's a circular wave in the surface, about twelve inches in diameter, like a ripple on a pond. It's subtle. There's no discoloration, no crack.
I should have looked elsewhere. I can't help it, though. I notice these things. And I know how to read drywall.
"What is it?" she asks. "Do you think the roof has a leak? Do you think the ceiling is wet?"
Standing on a (lovely) chair, touching it with a finger, I say, "It's wet. Isn't there a bathroom directly above?"
A minute later, the hostess is watching as I crawl into a space behind the shower and bath. Parting some insulation, I place my hand between joists — and my fingers feel a puddle. "Uh-oh," I say.
It's a huge bathroom with two sinks, a steambath/shower, and a separate Jacuzzi, all encased in elaborate marble slabs. "Best case," I say, "it just needs recaulking." I point to some areas of peeling sealant. "Worst case, you need to repair or replace the Jacuzzi, which would require pulling out all this marble."
"Who do I call?" she asks.
This is exactly the kind of job that used to be my specialty: too small to interest the big contractors but too complicated for a handyman. With my bad back, I just can't do it anymore. Unfortunately, the only tradesmen I'm familiar with are people who lack the plumbing skills or else lack the, uh, social delicacy to work for such high-end clients.
"Well, thanks for looking," she says.
Back at the dining table, all eyes keep checking the ring on the ceiling. "I wonder if it will collapse on me," says the Federal judge sitting directly underneath.
I whisper to my wife: "I don't think they'll ever invite me again."
Saturday, January 28, 2012
365 Jobs: Storms (Four) For the Money
Saturday, December 3, 1983
The phone still works, and I'm getting emergency calls. I drive the truck over the hill slowly. Wind and rain are pounding the cab. The road is a river of runoff, branches and rocks and entire bushes washed onto the asphalt, traffic lights out in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. El Camino, the main drag, is eerily dark. On the radio I hear that the Golden Gate Bridge is closed due to 70 mph squalls.
I begin with a non-emergency job, one that I'd scheduled weeks ago, installing a new light fixture at a house in Palo Alto. Their power is off, too, so the job is easy. Hope it works. I can't test it.
A bit behind schedule as I drive — oh so slowly — to the next job, I have to pull over for a moment, find a pen, and jot on the back of a credit card receipt while the truck shakes with gusts of air and water:
At an apartment complex in Palo Alto, they still have power, though ornamental trees have cracked in half. The gales are lessening. I patch a fence, put a sliding door on its tracks, glue a doorknob that kept falling off, and then — insanely — change an outdoor security light bulb, climbing my 40 foot extension ladder hoping for no sudden burst of wind. What am I thinking?
Getting paid, that's what I'm thinking. This is the opposite of altruism.
Surviving that chore, I tackle the final job: tracking down a mysterious and frustrating leak in a woman's bathroom which seems to come from the toilet — no, the sink — no, again, not that. This is the opposite of poetry. Finally, on hands and knees grubbing beneath a baseboard full of silverfish and soap scum and curly black hairs, I find it: the leak comes by subtle and hidden path from a shower door. I almost gave up on it, but the more time I invested, the more I stood to not get paid if I failed. Three hours to stop a tiny trickle of water. In this storm, what irony. Money motivates.
The phone still works, and I'm getting emergency calls. I drive the truck over the hill slowly. Wind and rain are pounding the cab. The road is a river of runoff, branches and rocks and entire bushes washed onto the asphalt, traffic lights out in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. El Camino, the main drag, is eerily dark. On the radio I hear that the Golden Gate Bridge is closed due to 70 mph squalls.
I begin with a non-emergency job, one that I'd scheduled weeks ago, installing a new light fixture at a house in Palo Alto. Their power is off, too, so the job is easy. Hope it works. I can't test it.
A bit behind schedule as I drive — oh so slowly — to the next job, I have to pull over for a moment, find a pen, and jot on the back of a credit card receipt while the truck shakes with gusts of air and water:
I'm sorry I was late.In the middle of chaos it somehow pleases me to write a poem that means absolutely nothing.
I had to stop by the side of the road
and write this poem.
At an apartment complex in Palo Alto, they still have power, though ornamental trees have cracked in half. The gales are lessening. I patch a fence, put a sliding door on its tracks, glue a doorknob that kept falling off, and then — insanely — change an outdoor security light bulb, climbing my 40 foot extension ladder hoping for no sudden burst of wind. What am I thinking?
Getting paid, that's what I'm thinking. This is the opposite of altruism.
Surviving that chore, I tackle the final job: tracking down a mysterious and frustrating leak in a woman's bathroom which seems to come from the toilet — no, the sink — no, again, not that. This is the opposite of poetry. Finally, on hands and knees grubbing beneath a baseboard full of silverfish and soap scum and curly black hairs, I find it: the leak comes by subtle and hidden path from a shower door. I almost gave up on it, but the more time I invested, the more I stood to not get paid if I failed. Three hours to stop a tiny trickle of water. In this storm, what irony. Money motivates.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
365 Jobs: Storms (Two) Helping the Next Guy
Saturday, January 22, 1983
In this endless El Niño winter there's a savage storm today, raining buckets, trees bending and roaring. A roadside ditch is blocked. Water is gushing across the roadway, down a hill and into my neighbor Mark's kitchen. He's out in the rain with a pick and shovel, desperately trying to clear the culvert where the water is supposed to stream under somebody's driveway. Mark looks like a madman plastered with rain.
I bring out my six foot steel bar, which is pointed at one end like a sixty-pound spear. Mark brings the rod over his head and then smashes it down again and again, poking holes through the driveway under which the culvert passes. I shovel debris. The blockage is cleared - and a third of the driveway is destroyed, stabbed to shreds by Mark and his heavy spear.
From helping Mark, I'm late leaving for work. My son Jesse, age six, wants to come along, just for the ride. He sits beside me in the cab of the truck listening to the radio as we drive an hour and a half through lashing gusty squalls across the Bay Bridge to Oakland and then north to Albany, where I replace my brother's water heater. To Jesse, my brother is Uncle Ed, a strange and wild man who looks a lot like me.
Driving home, before crossing the Bay we stop at an Arco station that makes me feel like a criminal — cash in advance, attendant behind bulletproof glass — reminding me why I live in the country. By the time we're coming down our mountain close to home, the storm is nearly over. A mist hangs in the air and clings to the windshield. Coming around a blind curve on La Honda Road, I have to swerve to avoid a landslide. I stop, pull out flares so the next driver will be warned. I show Jesse how to light them: Cool! Like roman candles.
Falling boulders, trees down, wires down — a winter norm. In these hills, everybody carries flares. You put them out not to help yourself but to warn the next guy. We're all in this together. Jesse absorbs this lesson as you absorb a way of life, without my speaking a word.
Back home in front of Mark's house, water rushes down the gutter and through the chopped-up culvert, heading where it belongs. To protect Mark's house from the next flood, the La Honda Volunteer Fire Brigade — men and women in bright yellow slickers — are stacking sandbags along the road. Volunteers. Jesse says we should go out to help. So we do.
.
.
.
(Last year I posted another story about that same El Niño winter. You can find it here.)
In this endless El Niño winter there's a savage storm today, raining buckets, trees bending and roaring. A roadside ditch is blocked. Water is gushing across the roadway, down a hill and into my neighbor Mark's kitchen. He's out in the rain with a pick and shovel, desperately trying to clear the culvert where the water is supposed to stream under somebody's driveway. Mark looks like a madman plastered with rain.
I bring out my six foot steel bar, which is pointed at one end like a sixty-pound spear. Mark brings the rod over his head and then smashes it down again and again, poking holes through the driveway under which the culvert passes. I shovel debris. The blockage is cleared - and a third of the driveway is destroyed, stabbed to shreds by Mark and his heavy spear.
From helping Mark, I'm late leaving for work. My son Jesse, age six, wants to come along, just for the ride. He sits beside me in the cab of the truck listening to the radio as we drive an hour and a half through lashing gusty squalls across the Bay Bridge to Oakland and then north to Albany, where I replace my brother's water heater. To Jesse, my brother is Uncle Ed, a strange and wild man who looks a lot like me.
Driving home, before crossing the Bay we stop at an Arco station that makes me feel like a criminal — cash in advance, attendant behind bulletproof glass — reminding me why I live in the country. By the time we're coming down our mountain close to home, the storm is nearly over. A mist hangs in the air and clings to the windshield. Coming around a blind curve on La Honda Road, I have to swerve to avoid a landslide. I stop, pull out flares so the next driver will be warned. I show Jesse how to light them: Cool! Like roman candles.
Falling boulders, trees down, wires down — a winter norm. In these hills, everybody carries flares. You put them out not to help yourself but to warn the next guy. We're all in this together. Jesse absorbs this lesson as you absorb a way of life, without my speaking a word.
Back home in front of Mark's house, water rushes down the gutter and through the chopped-up culvert, heading where it belongs. To protect Mark's house from the next flood, the La Honda Volunteer Fire Brigade — men and women in bright yellow slickers — are stacking sandbags along the road. Volunteers. Jesse says we should go out to help. So we do.
.
.
.
(Last year I posted another story about that same El Niño winter. You can find it here.)
Thursday, January 19, 2012
365 Jobs: Weather Report
Friday, January 19, 1990
I'm mucking, disconnecting pipes around an old two-room cabin next to a creek whose water is rushing with recent rain. After 50 years of settling into the forest floor, it's time to jack up the structure and pour a foundation.
There's a quick wind. Clouds scud overhead, framed in blue. I like it that my job keeps me in touch with the weather. Literally, in touch. Today it sends icy prickles into my fingertips.
Digging out a rusty pipe, I'm careful not to disturb a cheerful Castilleja — Indian Paintbrush — the last wild bloom of the old season. Or is it the first bloom of the new?
I'm mucking, disconnecting pipes around an old two-room cabin next to a creek whose water is rushing with recent rain. After 50 years of settling into the forest floor, it's time to jack up the structure and pour a foundation.
There's a quick wind. Clouds scud overhead, framed in blue. I like it that my job keeps me in touch with the weather. Literally, in touch. Today it sends icy prickles into my fingertips.
Digging out a rusty pipe, I'm careful not to disturb a cheerful Castilleja — Indian Paintbrush — the last wild bloom of the old season. Or is it the first bloom of the new?
Shutting off the water cock, I pause on hands and knees, peering closely. From the funky earth, tiny sprouts of sorrel jut to the light — and here come swords of grass, fresh shoots of milkmaid and baby leaves of forget-me-not. Excuse me but I'm thrilled. Electrified. The daily miracles of life on this planet.
At day's end I sit on the tailgate of my truck, pulling off boots. Overhead a vee of birds crosses pink wisps of cloud. Children’s voices in the dusk beyond the trees. A dog comes loping through the meadow weeds, tongue lolling, eyes bright, on the scent of something important. For just a moment our gazes meet; souls touch. Then he's off at a gallop.
We agree. Work is hard. Life is good.
At day's end I sit on the tailgate of my truck, pulling off boots. Overhead a vee of birds crosses pink wisps of cloud. Children’s voices in the dusk beyond the trees. A dog comes loping through the meadow weeds, tongue lolling, eyes bright, on the scent of something important. For just a moment our gazes meet; souls touch. Then he's off at a gallop.
We agree. Work is hard. Life is good.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
365 Jobs: Honking for Janelle
Saturday, January 17, 2004
Eight miles from the highway via a twisting dirt road I arrive at a faux-stone McMansion. It sits alone on the side of Langley Hill surrounded by oat grass and the occasional craggy oak. Janelle, who has probably heard the approach of my truck for the last ten minutes, greets me as I step from the cab.
"You made it," she says. "Not everyone does."
Janelle has gray hair in a braid down her back. Near the brand new house is an old barn where I repair copper pipes that their handyman accidentally cut through. Janelle and her husband Gary watch me work and chatter constantly at me, two sweet people, lonely. Upon learning that I'm a published writer, Janelle pumps me with questions. She seems starved for intellectual conversation. Gary, meanwhile, asks about water quality. He's a retired software executive, struck it rich in stock options.
In the fields are no cattle, no horses. A couple of deer are grazing.
It strikes me as odd: they buy 40 acres, build their dream house, a view of sunsets, rolling hills of golden oats, the ocean nine miles away, the country life without livestock or crops — and they can't fix anything. From their chatter it becomes clear that their neighbors frighten them. On one side, a billionaire from Silicon Valley is setting off dynamite, blasting holes in the hillside for wine cellars. On another side, an old rancher shoots any dog that enters his property.
From outside the house I can see a telescope on a tripod next to the vast glass window, facing the fields and ocean. Their great view comes at a cost. They're naked to the weather, exposed to an unrelenting uphill wind bringing fog and chill. As I work, the air screams — literally howls — through cracks in the siding of the barn.
At one point Gary realizes that while he has been talking at me, his wife has wandered away. "Where's Janelle?" he asks.
"I don't know." I'm soldering pipes.
A few seconds later, I hear the honking of my truck. Gary is leaning, reaching through the window, pressing the horn. From deep in the canyon comes an echo, like a ghost truck.
Janelle appears. "I'm here, dear. I just went to the house for a moment."
Gary grasps her. They walk into the howling barn, side by side, clutching hand to hand as I finish my work.
Eight miles from the highway via a twisting dirt road I arrive at a faux-stone McMansion. It sits alone on the side of Langley Hill surrounded by oat grass and the occasional craggy oak. Janelle, who has probably heard the approach of my truck for the last ten minutes, greets me as I step from the cab.
"You made it," she says. "Not everyone does."
Janelle has gray hair in a braid down her back. Near the brand new house is an old barn where I repair copper pipes that their handyman accidentally cut through. Janelle and her husband Gary watch me work and chatter constantly at me, two sweet people, lonely. Upon learning that I'm a published writer, Janelle pumps me with questions. She seems starved for intellectual conversation. Gary, meanwhile, asks about water quality. He's a retired software executive, struck it rich in stock options.
In the fields are no cattle, no horses. A couple of deer are grazing.
It strikes me as odd: they buy 40 acres, build their dream house, a view of sunsets, rolling hills of golden oats, the ocean nine miles away, the country life without livestock or crops — and they can't fix anything. From their chatter it becomes clear that their neighbors frighten them. On one side, a billionaire from Silicon Valley is setting off dynamite, blasting holes in the hillside for wine cellars. On another side, an old rancher shoots any dog that enters his property.
From outside the house I can see a telescope on a tripod next to the vast glass window, facing the fields and ocean. Their great view comes at a cost. They're naked to the weather, exposed to an unrelenting uphill wind bringing fog and chill. As I work, the air screams — literally howls — through cracks in the siding of the barn.
At one point Gary realizes that while he has been talking at me, his wife has wandered away. "Where's Janelle?" he asks.
"I don't know." I'm soldering pipes.
A few seconds later, I hear the honking of my truck. Gary is leaning, reaching through the window, pressing the horn. From deep in the canyon comes an echo, like a ghost truck.
Janelle appears. "I'm here, dear. I just went to the house for a moment."
Gary grasps her. They walk into the howling barn, side by side, clutching hand to hand as I finish my work.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
365 Jobs: Cranial Adjustments
Saturday, January 10, 1987
Caleb is an osteopath. He says osteopaths have the same training as an MD, but I'm not so sure. He's a friendly guy. We have mutual friends and encounter each other from time to time. He has two young boys who are like having two wild goats in the house. My kids don't want anything to do with them.
About a year ago Caleb asked me to look at his bathtub. One evening I dropped by after a particularly long day's work when I was too exhausted to be enthusiastic. It's weird, but I have to sound enthusiastic about a plumbing job, or people won't hire me. Maybe it isn't so for all plumbers, but it's true for me. I need to instill confidence in my clients. Anyway, Caleb gave the job to somebody else.
The somebody else couldn't have been too great, because now — it's 1987 — Caleb has called me for another job. His two boys are somewhat calmer now, ages 3 and 5. I install a new water heater, replacing 30 gallons with 50. To comply with the building code, I put the new water heater on a stand, which necessitates some replumbing of the entry and exit pipes. It turns into a full day job when Caleb adds some carpentry work: reversing doors, installing cabinet trim.
Sissy, Caleb's earth-goddess wife, waddles into the garage where I'm working. With a smile she says, "Nice to see you again." She's gorgeously, button-poppingly pregnant.
Joking, I gape at her belly and say, "Oh no. Not again."
Sharply she says, "Well you have three!" And she waddles out.
Sensitive subject, I guess. Or my usual poor delivery.
Caleb follows me around for much of the day asking questions, watching, learning how I do it. He tells me he bought a new Mac computer, just like me. He got together with a group of 23 homeopathic practitioners and ordered 23 Macs, shopping for the best group rate, and paid less than I did. There's a homeopathic program that runs on the Mac.
Try as I might, I can't make myself believe in homeopathy. And now here's this guy who looks like a nice young Jewish doctor practicing wacko medicine. Osteo makes sense to me, but homeopathy sounds like a con game.
Unlike so many alternative providers who claim to cure everything from acne to cancer, Caleb is modest. "I usually get good results," he says. "I don't think I've ever hurt anybody."
Caleb does cranial adjustments, especially with infants. In other words, he squeezes the baby's skull between his hands, reshaping it. "It takes a leap of faith by the parents," he says. "There's no scientific proof. Just good results most of the time. Here — look at this." Caleb shows me two photos of an infant. "Before and after," he says.
In the first photo the child looks tense and anxious. "Your basic colicky baby. Crying for two solid months. The mom was going crazy."
In the second photo, the child looks relaxed, smiling. "Five minutes after the first cranial." Then Caleb laughs. "It proves nothing. But the mom was sure happy. Tell me: after you install a water heater, has it ever blown up?"
"Not yet."
"Have you ever left a job worse than before you started?"
"Not lately."
He pretends to wipe sweat from his brow. "I'm reassured."
Apparently he's forgotten, so I tell him: "You gave a cranial to my youngest. Three years ago."
"At my office?"
"No, at my house. You were visiting next door, and we got to talking, and you came over and gave my son a cranial."
"Uh oh." Caleb frowns. "Did I charge you for it?"
"No."
"Good. Boy, was I green!" He pauses, thinking. "Why'd you let me do it?"
"I honestly don't know. You must've seemed confident."
"That's an act. For the placebo effect."
"Yeah. Sometimes I do that, too."
"Placebo plumbing! And that works on the pipes?"
"That, and a little solder."
"So now, how's your son doing?"
"He's great. A happy kid."
Caleb sighs. "I lucked out."
"Have you done cranials on your own boys?"
"Of course." He laughs. "That's what keeps me humble."
Caleb is an osteopath. He says osteopaths have the same training as an MD, but I'm not so sure. He's a friendly guy. We have mutual friends and encounter each other from time to time. He has two young boys who are like having two wild goats in the house. My kids don't want anything to do with them.
About a year ago Caleb asked me to look at his bathtub. One evening I dropped by after a particularly long day's work when I was too exhausted to be enthusiastic. It's weird, but I have to sound enthusiastic about a plumbing job, or people won't hire me. Maybe it isn't so for all plumbers, but it's true for me. I need to instill confidence in my clients. Anyway, Caleb gave the job to somebody else.
The somebody else couldn't have been too great, because now — it's 1987 — Caleb has called me for another job. His two boys are somewhat calmer now, ages 3 and 5. I install a new water heater, replacing 30 gallons with 50. To comply with the building code, I put the new water heater on a stand, which necessitates some replumbing of the entry and exit pipes. It turns into a full day job when Caleb adds some carpentry work: reversing doors, installing cabinet trim.
Sissy, Caleb's earth-goddess wife, waddles into the garage where I'm working. With a smile she says, "Nice to see you again." She's gorgeously, button-poppingly pregnant.
Joking, I gape at her belly and say, "Oh no. Not again."
Sharply she says, "Well you have three!" And she waddles out.
Sensitive subject, I guess. Or my usual poor delivery.
Caleb follows me around for much of the day asking questions, watching, learning how I do it. He tells me he bought a new Mac computer, just like me. He got together with a group of 23 homeopathic practitioners and ordered 23 Macs, shopping for the best group rate, and paid less than I did. There's a homeopathic program that runs on the Mac.
Try as I might, I can't make myself believe in homeopathy. And now here's this guy who looks like a nice young Jewish doctor practicing wacko medicine. Osteo makes sense to me, but homeopathy sounds like a con game.
Unlike so many alternative providers who claim to cure everything from acne to cancer, Caleb is modest. "I usually get good results," he says. "I don't think I've ever hurt anybody."
Caleb does cranial adjustments, especially with infants. In other words, he squeezes the baby's skull between his hands, reshaping it. "It takes a leap of faith by the parents," he says. "There's no scientific proof. Just good results most of the time. Here — look at this." Caleb shows me two photos of an infant. "Before and after," he says.
In the first photo the child looks tense and anxious. "Your basic colicky baby. Crying for two solid months. The mom was going crazy."
In the second photo, the child looks relaxed, smiling. "Five minutes after the first cranial." Then Caleb laughs. "It proves nothing. But the mom was sure happy. Tell me: after you install a water heater, has it ever blown up?"
"Not yet."
"Have you ever left a job worse than before you started?"
"Not lately."
He pretends to wipe sweat from his brow. "I'm reassured."
Apparently he's forgotten, so I tell him: "You gave a cranial to my youngest. Three years ago."
"At my office?"
"No, at my house. You were visiting next door, and we got to talking, and you came over and gave my son a cranial."
"Uh oh." Caleb frowns. "Did I charge you for it?"
"No."
"Good. Boy, was I green!" He pauses, thinking. "Why'd you let me do it?"
"I honestly don't know. You must've seemed confident.""That's an act. For the placebo effect."
"Yeah. Sometimes I do that, too."
"Placebo plumbing! And that works on the pipes?"
"That, and a little solder."
"So now, how's your son doing?"
"He's great. A happy kid."
Caleb sighs. "I lucked out."
"Have you done cranials on your own boys?"
"Of course." He laughs. "That's what keeps me humble."
Friday, December 16, 2011
365 Jobs: Bag Lady of the Suburbs
December, 1987
I'm working on a man's shower. I go out to my truck for a tool and find a crazy lady peering over the tailgate into the bed. My first thought is that she's looking to steal something but all I say is: "Hello. You need something?"
She jerks back and says, "I live in the house next door up the hill." She's old. She has red scars on her arms like they'd been shot full of holes. "This is my dog."
A scruffy mutt is dropping a pine cone at my feet. He looks up at me expectantly, wagging his tail.
The lady, too, looks at me expectantly. "He wants you to throw it for him," she says.
So I do. Again and again. While I'm playing throw-and-fetch with the dog, she says, "I could use a handyman to fix a drain plunger. And a screw came out of the vacuum cleaner. The furnace doesn't make any heat. The dishwasher caught on fire and I had to pull the plug. I could make a whole list of things."
"Uh huh," I say. From inside the house I see the homeowner glaring at us. I'm charging by the hour to fix his shower, so I'll have to adjust for the time spent out here.
The woman is speaking: "I’ve been reading the instruction manual about how to drive my car. I haven’t driven it in four years but I have to go to the dentist tomorrow because my tooth fell out.” She sticks a finger in her mouth and makes her cheek bulge where the molar is missing. “Did you think it only happens to children? Happy Hanukkah, huh? I like your shirt. Now that I’ve sold the property across the street finally I’ve got the money to fix things up. I only need you for an hour.”
I say, "What you've got sounds like it will take many hours. Several days."
Suddenly she’s angry. She draws herself up straight and says, “Listen, buster, it will take less than an hour because I say so. I’m the boss. Get it?”
Back inside the house, the man says, "I see you met Nelda. You wouldn't know it, but she could probably buy half of San Jose. She owns six houses on this road. For God's sake, don't work for her."
"I can't work for her. She already fired me."
"Lucky you."
Back home when I'm unloading the truck, I realize I'm missing a toilet auger. It had been sitting in the bed.
After a flash of anger, I feel sad for Nelda. Is she really going to ream her own toilets? She's a lonely lady with an old dog. If she were poor, I'd help her for free; but she's loaded and she stole my tool — a rusty, smelly, ten dollar tool. She's a bag lady without the bag, with property. How do you help somebody like that?
I'm working on a man's shower. I go out to my truck for a tool and find a crazy lady peering over the tailgate into the bed. My first thought is that she's looking to steal something but all I say is: "Hello. You need something?"
She jerks back and says, "I live in the house next door up the hill." She's old. She has red scars on her arms like they'd been shot full of holes. "This is my dog."
A scruffy mutt is dropping a pine cone at my feet. He looks up at me expectantly, wagging his tail.
The lady, too, looks at me expectantly. "He wants you to throw it for him," she says.
So I do. Again and again. While I'm playing throw-and-fetch with the dog, she says, "I could use a handyman to fix a drain plunger. And a screw came out of the vacuum cleaner. The furnace doesn't make any heat. The dishwasher caught on fire and I had to pull the plug. I could make a whole list of things."
"Uh huh," I say. From inside the house I see the homeowner glaring at us. I'm charging by the hour to fix his shower, so I'll have to adjust for the time spent out here.
The woman is speaking: "I’ve been reading the instruction manual about how to drive my car. I haven’t driven it in four years but I have to go to the dentist tomorrow because my tooth fell out.” She sticks a finger in her mouth and makes her cheek bulge where the molar is missing. “Did you think it only happens to children? Happy Hanukkah, huh? I like your shirt. Now that I’ve sold the property across the street finally I’ve got the money to fix things up. I only need you for an hour.”
I say, "What you've got sounds like it will take many hours. Several days."
Suddenly she’s angry. She draws herself up straight and says, “Listen, buster, it will take less than an hour because I say so. I’m the boss. Get it?”
Back inside the house, the man says, "I see you met Nelda. You wouldn't know it, but she could probably buy half of San Jose. She owns six houses on this road. For God's sake, don't work for her."
"I can't work for her. She already fired me."
"Lucky you."
Back home when I'm unloading the truck, I realize I'm missing a toilet auger. It had been sitting in the bed.
After a flash of anger, I feel sad for Nelda. Is she really going to ream her own toilets? She's a lonely lady with an old dog. If she were poor, I'd help her for free; but she's loaded and she stole my tool — a rusty, smelly, ten dollar tool. She's a bag lady without the bag, with property. How do you help somebody like that?
Thursday, November 17, 2011
365 Jobs: Peace and Love and Wall Thermostats
Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 23
Wednesday, October 29, 1986
An
early morning consult. Taylor is an intense, speedy young man in blue
jeans and a black mustache. In less than an hour we plan about $2000
worth of small projects in his glorious house, a beam-and-stone castle
with a broad view over Silicon Valley. Whenever I name a price, Taylor
immediately says "Okay" so quickly that I wonder if he heard it. He
gives me a business card: he's an electrical engineer, a manager at
Hewlett Packard. By my reckoning he's about 24 years old in a ten-room
house with no wife, no kids. King-size bed.
Standing in the driveway we agree to a timetable for the work. Taylor zooms off in a shiny black Porsche. Hesitating for a moment under the quiet redwoods, I can see sunlight glinting off tiny windshields on a fabric of highways from Palo Alto to San Jose. A whole world is zooming off.
It's 1986; I'm 39 years old. I've just bought my first computer, a Mac Plus.
From Taylor's tony estate, next stop is Sonny’s bungalow right next to the rush and rumble of the Bayshore Freeway. Lovely red-haired sparkle-eyed Lorraine, Sonny's wife, is dealing with a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Lorraine says she always thought she wanted seven children, but now she’s wavering. “But don’t tell Sonny. The minute I show the slightest doubt, he’ll run out and get a vasectomy.”
In one long day I install a sink, a faucet, a garbage disposer, a dishwasher, a vent fan, plus switches and outlets. Sonny arrives at the end. He's been out installing doors — his niche. I tell him the parts cost a hundred dollars. From his wallet he whips out a hundred dollar bill.
Sonny can’t stand to have anyone do favors for him. This was an even trade, and he knows it, but still he won’t let me leave without giving me a screwdriver, a bran muffin, a cup of coffee. Sonny is probably the most generous person I've ever met. He's also a hardworking hippy, if you can handle such a combination of terms. Sonny is part of a whole cadre of hardworking, hardplaying freaks in the crafts. After the Haight came the diaspora. They learned skills, found niches, and held onto their values.
From Sonny’s, next stop is an apartment complex near Stanford University. Most of the residents are foreign-born students along with their spouses and sometimes their grandparents. They don’t know how to use garbage disposers or dishwashers, and as the maintenance guy I end up performing some very simple repairs while trying to teach non-English-speaking housewives from Thailand and Paraguay and Nigeria how to use an American kitchen.
It’s dark when I arrive at the apartments. Everyone is cooking dinner. I smell rice frying here, pork baking there. One of the units has “an electrical problem.”
It’s a bad light bulb.
Another unit has a "broken heater." It's turned off. I try to teach a Croatian-speaking grandmother how to operate the wall thermostat.
I'm not sure she gets it, but she seems satisfied. She gives me something that looks like stuffed grape leaves.
It's 7 p.m. I've been working since 7 a.m. It's the era of Ronald Reagan. The Fox Network has just launched. I drive through rain to pick up 4 gallons of milk at a Menlo Park supermarket where, selecting vegetables, there is a lovely young couple. Menlo Park, by the way, is the headquarters of Sunset Magazine. Back home, on the Mac Plus I write this:
Thursday, November 17, 2011
I wrote that poem 25 years ago. The Menlo Park supermarket is now a Safeway so vast you can get lost in it. The young couple of 1986 would now be age 44. Perhaps they have children, teenagers. The Sixties are four decades gone, a time as distant and unreal to a present-day teenager as the Roaring Twenties were to me.
Much of the world becomes middle class. We are wealthy but feel poor. We live better than medieval kings — better food, softer beds, longer lives. In every castle we have music and jesters at the push of a button. We have dishwashers, garbage disposers and wall thermostats. Do we want more?
So much has changed. And so little.
Wednesday, October 29, 1986
An
early morning consult. Taylor is an intense, speedy young man in blue
jeans and a black mustache. In less than an hour we plan about $2000
worth of small projects in his glorious house, a beam-and-stone castle
with a broad view over Silicon Valley. Whenever I name a price, Taylor
immediately says "Okay" so quickly that I wonder if he heard it. He
gives me a business card: he's an electrical engineer, a manager at
Hewlett Packard. By my reckoning he's about 24 years old in a ten-room
house with no wife, no kids. King-size bed. Standing in the driveway we agree to a timetable for the work. Taylor zooms off in a shiny black Porsche. Hesitating for a moment under the quiet redwoods, I can see sunlight glinting off tiny windshields on a fabric of highways from Palo Alto to San Jose. A whole world is zooming off.
It's 1986; I'm 39 years old. I've just bought my first computer, a Mac Plus.
From Taylor's tony estate, next stop is Sonny’s bungalow right next to the rush and rumble of the Bayshore Freeway. Lovely red-haired sparkle-eyed Lorraine, Sonny's wife, is dealing with a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Lorraine says she always thought she wanted seven children, but now she’s wavering. “But don’t tell Sonny. The minute I show the slightest doubt, he’ll run out and get a vasectomy.”
In one long day I install a sink, a faucet, a garbage disposer, a dishwasher, a vent fan, plus switches and outlets. Sonny arrives at the end. He's been out installing doors — his niche. I tell him the parts cost a hundred dollars. From his wallet he whips out a hundred dollar bill.
Sonny can’t stand to have anyone do favors for him. This was an even trade, and he knows it, but still he won’t let me leave without giving me a screwdriver, a bran muffin, a cup of coffee. Sonny is probably the most generous person I've ever met. He's also a hardworking hippy, if you can handle such a combination of terms. Sonny is part of a whole cadre of hardworking, hardplaying freaks in the crafts. After the Haight came the diaspora. They learned skills, found niches, and held onto their values.
From Sonny’s, next stop is an apartment complex near Stanford University. Most of the residents are foreign-born students along with their spouses and sometimes their grandparents. They don’t know how to use garbage disposers or dishwashers, and as the maintenance guy I end up performing some very simple repairs while trying to teach non-English-speaking housewives from Thailand and Paraguay and Nigeria how to use an American kitchen.
It’s dark when I arrive at the apartments. Everyone is cooking dinner. I smell rice frying here, pork baking there. One of the units has “an electrical problem.”
It’s a bad light bulb.
Another unit has a "broken heater." It's turned off. I try to teach a Croatian-speaking grandmother how to operate the wall thermostat.
I'm not sure she gets it, but she seems satisfied. She gives me something that looks like stuffed grape leaves.
It's 7 p.m. I've been working since 7 a.m. It's the era of Ronald Reagan. The Fox Network has just launched. I drive through rain to pick up 4 gallons of milk at a Menlo Park supermarket where, selecting vegetables, there is a lovely young couple. Menlo Park, by the way, is the headquarters of Sunset Magazine. Back home, on the Mac Plus I write this:
He wears an ill-fitting gown
in this Sunset Magazine town.
She's dressed as a peasant.
The effect is pleasant
and flamboyant in this middle class store
of homeowners writing checks, wanting more.
This couple wants less.
Her hair needs care.
His beard is straggly, partly bare.
Age: about nineteen,
faces fresh, eyes keen.
The decade of their birth
was a struggle on Planet Earth.
In this cornucopia of Wonder Bread and Froot Loops
they choose rice, wheat germ, and chocolate soup.
On one hand he wears an embroidered glove.
What does he know of the Sixties, the Summer of Love?
Naive, laughed-at, sincere. . .
. . . back then, it was me
cruising the ghetto A&P
in paisley and sandals
for peace lighting candles
and what I mean is, God bless you, young couple
as your bubble of idealism washes down
a sea of weary shoppers in a too wealthy town.
My cart fills with yogurt and imported beers.
Somehow we saved the planet these nineteen years.
So much we learned!
Now it's your turn.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
I wrote that poem 25 years ago. The Menlo Park supermarket is now a Safeway so vast you can get lost in it. The young couple of 1986 would now be age 44. Perhaps they have children, teenagers. The Sixties are four decades gone, a time as distant and unreal to a present-day teenager as the Roaring Twenties were to me.
Much of the world becomes middle class. We are wealthy but feel poor. We live better than medieval kings — better food, softer beds, longer lives. In every castle we have music and jesters at the push of a button. We have dishwashers, garbage disposers and wall thermostats. Do we want more?
So much has changed. And so little.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
365 Jobs: Universal Language
September 17, 1983
Universal Language
The man tells me in Chinese
with gestures
how the water drips from upstairs
into his kitchen.
I understand.
I tell the man in English
with gestures
how I repaired the tub.
He understands.
The water doesn’t speak
or understand.
We hear it, though,
still dripping.
Universal Language
The man tells me in Chinese
with gestures
how the water drips from upstairs
into his kitchen.
I understand.
I tell the man in English
with gestures
how I repaired the tub.
He understands.
The water doesn’t speak
or understand.
We hear it, though,
still dripping.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
365 Jobs: Plumbing and LSD
August, 1987
Stony Ridge was an isolated, quiet, hardscrabble ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains. You'd never find it unless you had good directions. At the end of a long, twisting, somewhat hair-raising driveway you came to a gorgeous little valley, rocky and rugged and utterly private, with an ugly stucco ranch house. A Stanford professor owned it with plans to someday retire there. Meanwhile he rented the place to some Stanford MBA students who seemed incongruous in the wild west setting.
The house was unfurnished. Apparently all the Stanford MBA students required at the time was a mattress, desk, and gigantic stereo equipment. They decorated the walls with pictures of themselves bare-chested riding motorcycles and singing rock and roll. No doubt these men are now Silicon Valley moguls of the highest rank.
When the stereo was off, the only sounds were the scuttling of lizards and the clicking of computer keyboards.
For several years I repaired the ranch house and surrounding outbuildings, never meeting the owner who spoke to me by phone and mailed me checks. The house was a dusty broken-down disaster that had previously been maintained by an 80-year-old legendary mountain handyman. I removed the man's deadly bootleg electric system which had tapped into the service entrance before the breaker box. I patched the funky water system and tried to keep everything running.
Eventually I met the owner, Bob, who wanted to make the small barn livable so he could use it on weekends and eventually retire there. Part of the barn would be a sculpture studio.
On a hot morning in August I was installing a sewer line from the barn to join the main septic line from the house. Olen Ring, a fellow La Hondan, was operating a Bobcat. Olen was backhoeing the ditch while I followed along with a shovel, communicating with hand-signals and head nods.
After Olen departed, Bob invited me to join him for lunch. He said he'd been watching me and, he said, "I like the way you work."
"I try to get it right," I said.
"I mean I like the way you synchronized with that backhoe guy. How you communicate. How you visualize."
All we'd done was plan a ditch and dig it. I selected Olen because he always had a precise, gentle touch on a Bobcat.
Bob showed me the sculpture studio, which was basically a stable with a window. He was working with clay, shaping a nice little nude. No model.
Over bowls of soup Bob questioned me and pried out the fact that I was a published writer, something I rarely revealed to clients. My most recent novel, Frank City Goodbye, was about the birth of the hippies in the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Upon learning this, Bob peppered me with questions. How did I know so much about the hippies? Had I been there? Did I take LSD? Did I hang out with Ken Kesey in La Honda? What did I know about the origins of Kesey's LSD experience?
I answered as best I could.
Bob's wife was there, too, spooning soup and looking more and more uncomfortable. Finally she said, "Disclose yourself, Bob."
He disclosed. Bob had been one of the researchers at the Menlo VA hospital where Ken Kesey was given LSD. Bob knew more about the whole story than I did. He attended the Trips Festival, met Timothy Leary, etc. But he’d been an academic and seemed to know little about how it felt to be young then. That was my area of expertise: being young then, being a seed blown by the wind of the Sixties. Bob was fascinated at how I'd taken root in La Honda, writing books, raising family, working with my body as much as my head.
I told Bob I’d quit writing. At the moment I couldn’t juggle it anymore with work and raising kids.
"I've been through the same thing," he said. "It comes back." He meant the sculpting, the nice little nude.
As I found out later, Bob — Professor Robert McKim — was an engineer and industrial designer. He created the Product Design major and the graduate-level Joint Program in Design at Stanford, an interdisciplinary program that combines mechanical engineering, art, math, physics and psychology. Dean Hovey, one of the first graduate students in the program, said, “Bob McKim was trying to create little Leonardo da Vincis, people who were skilled in many things and diverse enough to create a whole product."
As a professor Bob had become frustrated that his engineering students couldn't draw or, in his words, "think visually." He searched for ways to open their minds to visual problem-solving, which led him to the LSD research at the Menlo Park Veteran's Hospital.
In a book called Altered States of Consciousness, Bob co-authored a chapter (originally published in 1966) describing volunteers — engineers, physicists, mathematicians — who were trying to solve problems after a 200 microgram dose of LSD supplied by the U.S. government. (Oh how I wish there were a followup study of those volunteers, many years later.)
Bob moved on to other, non-drug methods of encouraging visual thinking and wrote a textbook on the subject: Experiences in Visual Thinking.
Thirty-some years later, by coincidence my son Jesse took a few of those classes pioneered by Robert McKim at Stanford. By then, Bob had retired.
Bob was a visionary in his field and an inspiration to a generation of designers, including the founders of IDEO, a world-famous design firm in Palo Alto where in the long strange trip of life, my son Jesse now works. For the record, Jesse has never taken LSD. But I'm sure Bob would appreciate Jesse's work methods, just as he admired mine.
As a handyman you never know what connections you'll make in the dusty backroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Stony Ridge was an isolated, quiet, hardscrabble ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains. You'd never find it unless you had good directions. At the end of a long, twisting, somewhat hair-raising driveway you came to a gorgeous little valley, rocky and rugged and utterly private, with an ugly stucco ranch house. A Stanford professor owned it with plans to someday retire there. Meanwhile he rented the place to some Stanford MBA students who seemed incongruous in the wild west setting.
The house was unfurnished. Apparently all the Stanford MBA students required at the time was a mattress, desk, and gigantic stereo equipment. They decorated the walls with pictures of themselves bare-chested riding motorcycles and singing rock and roll. No doubt these men are now Silicon Valley moguls of the highest rank.
When the stereo was off, the only sounds were the scuttling of lizards and the clicking of computer keyboards.
For several years I repaired the ranch house and surrounding outbuildings, never meeting the owner who spoke to me by phone and mailed me checks. The house was a dusty broken-down disaster that had previously been maintained by an 80-year-old legendary mountain handyman. I removed the man's deadly bootleg electric system which had tapped into the service entrance before the breaker box. I patched the funky water system and tried to keep everything running.
Eventually I met the owner, Bob, who wanted to make the small barn livable so he could use it on weekends and eventually retire there. Part of the barn would be a sculpture studio.
On a hot morning in August I was installing a sewer line from the barn to join the main septic line from the house. Olen Ring, a fellow La Hondan, was operating a Bobcat. Olen was backhoeing the ditch while I followed along with a shovel, communicating with hand-signals and head nods.
After Olen departed, Bob invited me to join him for lunch. He said he'd been watching me and, he said, "I like the way you work."
"I try to get it right," I said.
"I mean I like the way you synchronized with that backhoe guy. How you communicate. How you visualize."
All we'd done was plan a ditch and dig it. I selected Olen because he always had a precise, gentle touch on a Bobcat.
Bob showed me the sculpture studio, which was basically a stable with a window. He was working with clay, shaping a nice little nude. No model.
Over bowls of soup Bob questioned me and pried out the fact that I was a published writer, something I rarely revealed to clients. My most recent novel, Frank City Goodbye, was about the birth of the hippies in the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Upon learning this, Bob peppered me with questions. How did I know so much about the hippies? Had I been there? Did I take LSD? Did I hang out with Ken Kesey in La Honda? What did I know about the origins of Kesey's LSD experience?
I answered as best I could.
Bob's wife was there, too, spooning soup and looking more and more uncomfortable. Finally she said, "Disclose yourself, Bob."
He disclosed. Bob had been one of the researchers at the Menlo VA hospital where Ken Kesey was given LSD. Bob knew more about the whole story than I did. He attended the Trips Festival, met Timothy Leary, etc. But he’d been an academic and seemed to know little about how it felt to be young then. That was my area of expertise: being young then, being a seed blown by the wind of the Sixties. Bob was fascinated at how I'd taken root in La Honda, writing books, raising family, working with my body as much as my head.
I told Bob I’d quit writing. At the moment I couldn’t juggle it anymore with work and raising kids.
"I've been through the same thing," he said. "It comes back." He meant the sculpting, the nice little nude.
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| Robert McKim |
As a professor Bob had become frustrated that his engineering students couldn't draw or, in his words, "think visually." He searched for ways to open their minds to visual problem-solving, which led him to the LSD research at the Menlo Park Veteran's Hospital.
In a book called Altered States of Consciousness, Bob co-authored a chapter (originally published in 1966) describing volunteers — engineers, physicists, mathematicians — who were trying to solve problems after a 200 microgram dose of LSD supplied by the U.S. government. (Oh how I wish there were a followup study of those volunteers, many years later.)
Bob moved on to other, non-drug methods of encouraging visual thinking and wrote a textbook on the subject: Experiences in Visual Thinking.Thirty-some years later, by coincidence my son Jesse took a few of those classes pioneered by Robert McKim at Stanford. By then, Bob had retired.
Bob was a visionary in his field and an inspiration to a generation of designers, including the founders of IDEO, a world-famous design firm in Palo Alto where in the long strange trip of life, my son Jesse now works. For the record, Jesse has never taken LSD. But I'm sure Bob would appreciate Jesse's work methods, just as he admired mine.
As a handyman you never know what connections you'll make in the dusty backroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
365 Jobs, Day 207: Half a World
July, 1978
Mrs. Caswell opened the front door, took one look at me, and laughed. "You have funny hair," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't be sorry. I like it." Her own hair was elegant, smoothly brushed. In fact, everything about her was elegant and smooth: her face, her poise, even the blue jeans which fit her like water. She was small, trim, confident. Older than me. Like many small women she knew she had power over men, and she seemed comfortable with that fact.
I had come to install two gas fireplaces. I didn't tell her I'd never done this before. On the phone she'd said there was already gas to the fireplace box, so all I had to do was hook them up.
In a mirror I checked my hair. It looked normal to me.
She showed me the fireplaces and the gas log kits. "I'm sure it's a very simple job," she said. "Most people would do it themselves, but my husband is insane and my son is an idiot." She smiled unselfconsciously. One of her teeth was crooked. She was holding a cocktail glass. It was 10 in the morning.
This was a house in Atherton, a classy town.
I went back to my truck for tools. A stringy-haired man wearing a leather vest with the Hells Angels logo was repairing the electric driveway gate. "Another piece of shit," he said.
"What?"
"Crappo gate," he said. "Fancy design with a tiny motor. Typical Atherton shit. They buy first class furniture, and that carpet must be two inches thick, but look at those cheapo aluminum windows. Shoddy. So many of these places. Shoddy shit. These people have money but they wouldn't know a well-built house if they saw one. Then they fill it with their fancy shit."
"You'd think they'd want a good gate."
He winked. "I'm gonna sell her on that. After I fix this."
"Did she by any chance say something about your hair?"
"She said it was pretty." He cackled.
The installation of the two gas logs went easily enough, but when I opened the valve, nothing came out. I started poking around the house, trying to follow the pipe to its source. Somewhere between the main shutoff and the fireplaces, there had to be another valve or possibly a disconnect.
I saw the stringy-haired Hells Angel go into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and help himself to a Heineken. Elegant he was not. "You seen her?" he said.
"She's somewhere in the back of the house."
He wandered off.
Outside, I found the problem. The fireplace pipe had never been connected to the main. I'd have to cut the main, thread it, install a union and a tee. I went to find Mrs. Caswell to explain the extra work. There were voices from the bedroom behind a closed door. Hers. The Hells Angel. I walked away.
A half hour later the Angel came outside where I was working. His hair was freshly brushed.
"You sell her on the gate?" I asked.
"Mmm." He smiled. "She's negotiable." Then he left.
Though by now I was well into the project, I wanted to explain what I was doing. Inside the house I called: "Mrs. Caswell? Ma'am?"
I heard a muffled reply. She was still in the bedroom, door closed.
"It's a lot more work than I expected. I want you to know."
"Just do it," she said without opening the door. I heard the squeak of a knob turning, the hiss of a shower starting.
An hour later, I found her in the kitchen mixing a cocktail. She'd changed into a pink dress, slinky. Pink sandals. Chic as ever. She was half singing, half humming to herself. Close to You, the Carpenters song. She sang the instrumental break: "Waa, daba da da..."
"All done," I said.
She smiled. "Can I fix you a drink?"
"No thanks."
"Can I trim your hair? I used to do that, you know. Before..." With a nod of her head she indicated the kitchen, the whole Atherton house. "Before all this. I could make it cute."
"Not today, thanks."
"Well at least you have to let me brush it." She already had a brush in her hand. A petite woman, she had to reach high for my hair. She smelled like - I don't know how to describe it - she smelled like the bar of a classy hotel.
Looking up at me with fingers still in my hair, she said, "We have a hot tub. Would you like to take a look?"
"Is something wrong with it?"
She smiled. "It's very private."
I could get laid. Or I could get paid. I wasn't sure I could do both. And I desperately needed the money. My wife was pregnant with our second child.
Suddenly I didn't like Mrs. Caswell at all. I was wearing my ring. She could see it.
You talk about some things, joke about them, fantasize. In real life - at least in my half of the world - you try for solid construction, good foundation. "I better go," I said.
She blinked. Nothing more.
She wrote a check with an ostrich-feather pen, pink ink. She misspelled ninety as "ninty," but she had elegant script.
Mrs. Caswell opened the front door, took one look at me, and laughed. "You have funny hair," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't be sorry. I like it." Her own hair was elegant, smoothly brushed. In fact, everything about her was elegant and smooth: her face, her poise, even the blue jeans which fit her like water. She was small, trim, confident. Older than me. Like many small women she knew she had power over men, and she seemed comfortable with that fact.
I had come to install two gas fireplaces. I didn't tell her I'd never done this before. On the phone she'd said there was already gas to the fireplace box, so all I had to do was hook them up.
In a mirror I checked my hair. It looked normal to me.
She showed me the fireplaces and the gas log kits. "I'm sure it's a very simple job," she said. "Most people would do it themselves, but my husband is insane and my son is an idiot." She smiled unselfconsciously. One of her teeth was crooked. She was holding a cocktail glass. It was 10 in the morning.
This was a house in Atherton, a classy town.
I went back to my truck for tools. A stringy-haired man wearing a leather vest with the Hells Angels logo was repairing the electric driveway gate. "Another piece of shit," he said.
"What?"
"Crappo gate," he said. "Fancy design with a tiny motor. Typical Atherton shit. They buy first class furniture, and that carpet must be two inches thick, but look at those cheapo aluminum windows. Shoddy. So many of these places. Shoddy shit. These people have money but they wouldn't know a well-built house if they saw one. Then they fill it with their fancy shit."
"You'd think they'd want a good gate."
He winked. "I'm gonna sell her on that. After I fix this."
"Did she by any chance say something about your hair?"
"She said it was pretty." He cackled.
The installation of the two gas logs went easily enough, but when I opened the valve, nothing came out. I started poking around the house, trying to follow the pipe to its source. Somewhere between the main shutoff and the fireplaces, there had to be another valve or possibly a disconnect.
I saw the stringy-haired Hells Angel go into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and help himself to a Heineken. Elegant he was not. "You seen her?" he said.
"She's somewhere in the back of the house."
He wandered off.
Outside, I found the problem. The fireplace pipe had never been connected to the main. I'd have to cut the main, thread it, install a union and a tee. I went to find Mrs. Caswell to explain the extra work. There were voices from the bedroom behind a closed door. Hers. The Hells Angel. I walked away.
A half hour later the Angel came outside where I was working. His hair was freshly brushed.
"You sell her on the gate?" I asked.
"Mmm." He smiled. "She's negotiable." Then he left.
Though by now I was well into the project, I wanted to explain what I was doing. Inside the house I called: "Mrs. Caswell? Ma'am?"
I heard a muffled reply. She was still in the bedroom, door closed.
"It's a lot more work than I expected. I want you to know."
"Just do it," she said without opening the door. I heard the squeak of a knob turning, the hiss of a shower starting.
An hour later, I found her in the kitchen mixing a cocktail. She'd changed into a pink dress, slinky. Pink sandals. Chic as ever. She was half singing, half humming to herself. Close to You, the Carpenters song. She sang the instrumental break: "Waa, daba da da..."
"All done," I said.
She smiled. "Can I fix you a drink?"
"No thanks."
"Can I trim your hair? I used to do that, you know. Before..." With a nod of her head she indicated the kitchen, the whole Atherton house. "Before all this. I could make it cute."
"Not today, thanks."
"Well at least you have to let me brush it." She already had a brush in her hand. A petite woman, she had to reach high for my hair. She smelled like - I don't know how to describe it - she smelled like the bar of a classy hotel.
Looking up at me with fingers still in my hair, she said, "We have a hot tub. Would you like to take a look?"
"Is something wrong with it?"
She smiled. "It's very private."
I could get laid. Or I could get paid. I wasn't sure I could do both. And I desperately needed the money. My wife was pregnant with our second child.
Suddenly I didn't like Mrs. Caswell at all. I was wearing my ring. She could see it.
You talk about some things, joke about them, fantasize. In real life - at least in my half of the world - you try for solid construction, good foundation. "I better go," I said.
She blinked. Nothing more.
She wrote a check with an ostrich-feather pen, pink ink. She misspelled ninety as "ninty," but she had elegant script.
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