“It’s the end of the world,” Fred always starts. “Whew. Whewwww.”
This is the beginning of most of his stories.
I visited him this week. He’s my former high school teacher and lifelong friend, and recovering from a health scare.
Fred taught me the value of a good anecdote. Storytelling is a way of surviving life. If you can tell a story about something and make it entertaining, you can survive anything. I learned the craft from him, although I’m still his student. He’s the master.
When he got sick last month, the foreboding and panic I felt was terrifying.
Fred cannot die. Not now, not so soon after my mother. I don’t know how to get through life without him.
He’s always brought an order to things for me. We meet, we talk, we laugh and laugh. And no matter how awful life gets, when we tell each other stories, things right themselves. I always leave my visits with him fortified. It’s almost mystical.
When I was a teenager, I spent hours listening to him.
He’s a master of detail and connecting the dots of everyday life. His command of literature and the English language are unparalleled. In a small town where nothing seemed to happen, ever, he was always the bright spot.
But he’s not pretentious. He’s a country boy from Montross, Virginia. Pretentious people bore him to death. He taught English and Drama for decades in the public school system in Virginia. Those of us who had him for a teacher know how lucky we are.
Fred grew up in the state’s remote Northern Neck. He doesn’t discount people who have no formal education. He knows country people smart as whips, and some educated ones who are deadly tiresome.
I never want to bore Fred. I try to bring him my best stories. I remember a poem I wrote my sophomore year of high school, and the note at the top after he graded it:
“Pretty well-worked territory.”
I could hear him yawn. I vowed to learn to write better. He was my first critic, and I think his opinion probably matters more to me than anyone’s.
Because he’s had to do estate work himself, he appreciates the hilarity of how badly my days can go lately. He’s lived through the hundreds of tiny details determined to pummel me into the ground.
I can’t wait to tell him about the plumber but want to read my Uber Eats story to him first.
“I went full Brenda Dawn!” I announce as I walk in.
Over forty years ago, Fred invented a character named Brenda Dawn. He’d fashion stories for me about her.
Brenda Dawn lived off Route 17. One day she ran out of cigarettes and rushed across the highway to 7-11 with her curlers in her hair. A truck hit her, she died, and all that was left of her was a single mule slipper. Her mother never got over it.
If you don’t understand, you didn’t grow up in the Tidewater area. You can still find Brenda Dawns here. She’s an icon.
And as I ran through the neighborhood in my pajamas this week, I realized I’d become her.
“Is Brenda Dawn in the story?” Fred asks.
Damnit. I thought about including her and didn’t.
“No,” I said, “not this time.”
“Well stick her in another one,” he instructed.
His wish is my command.
I read him the story but what makes him laugh most is the existence of Uber Eats. He was born in 1940 and didn’t expect having to survive Uber Eats.
Onto the plumber.
“I am in love with the plumber,” I pronounce, “because he only charged me for four hours work for two days of work.”
Fred shares my appreciation of people who can fix things. The worst thing Fred could say about anyone is,
“They can’t fix shit.”
In the early nineties, I moved back to Virginia for five years and married a man who worked as a mechanic.
One night, Fred called and told me he’d locked his keys in his car. Would it be possible to ask Darrell to come help him?
Darrell adored Fred, and happily went out the door with Slim-Jim in hand.
I told Fred he was on his way.
“Thank you Jesus,” Fred said.
A couple of days later, I got another phone call.
“Elizabeth,” he said. He used the kind of tone I use with people when I know they’re going to hate what I have to say but I need to say it anyway.
“I might have locked my keys in the car. Again.”
Being married to a mechanic is very similar to being married to a doctor. All your friends call in the middle of the night seeking professional help. For free.
I put my hand over the receiver and said to Darrell,
“He did it again.”
This time Darrell sighed before he walked out the door. Fred was pushing it.
Less than a week went by before I got another phone call. Things do tend to happen in threes.
“Do you think,” Fred asked, fully aware he was in dangerous waters, “That we can ask him again?”
Well, obviously.
Fred waited for him to arrive. Darrell showed up, opened the car door, and left without saying a single word to him.
When I told Fred that Darrell and I were getting divorced, he was crushed.
“I loved him more than you did,” he said wistfully.
What is better in life than knowing someone can get you out of a jam? What is better than being faced with some insurmountable disaster of everyday life, and someone shows up to sort it for you?
Not much. So I knew Fred would appreciate the plumber.
Life is a series of problems, big and small. It’s the small stuff that sends me over the edge. I suffer from a term called broken shoelace syndrome. As Charles Bukowski wrote in 1972,
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
That’s right. Bukowski is helpful, too.
“Where did you find the plumber?” Fred asks.
“Well,” I said, “He’s Tammy’s plumber. And I’ve wanted to use him for a long time but he refused to work for my mother…”
I can’t imagine the plumber was the only tradesman who refused to work for her. My mother was impossible. She never met an expert at anything she wasn’t willing to correct.
She had a habit of “supervising.” This meant no one could do anything without her peering over their shoulder.
The difference between she and I is I know I’m not an expert at everything.
“Anyway,” I continue, “I had to wait till she died to hire him.”
Fred and I burst into laughter.
When I first called the plumber and told him who I was, he told me he was booked for two weeks straight. I accepted this. But I reiterated my mother was, in fact, dead, and that I would never dream of treating him the way she did.
This plumber is one of a kind: he understands old houses. He has experience with them. And there’s no computer billing. You write him a check and he hand-writes a receipt. And if he’s Tammy’s plumber, I know he has fair prices. Tammy is a thrifty shopper.
Getting him would be the coup of a lifetime.
After my speech, the plumber hemmed and hawed, and said although he couldn’t get out there to fix the sewer line, I was welcome to call him again if anything went wrong,
“…in that old house of yours.”
About a week later, I needed help installing a shower. I called him again, and he came out to do an estimate.
“Well,” he said. I knew he was deciding whether to take a gamble on me. He finally agreed to do the job.
Everything went swimmingly.
When I returned to Virginia two weeks ago, I was faced with a trio of little plumbing jobs that needed fixing all at once. Secret Service had to get back to New York.
One tenant’s shower wasn’t draining, another had a sink that was clogged, and the drain for the washing machine was broken.
I called the plumber, because now we have a relationship. He agreed to come out.
He wears overalls, and limps, and looks about 150 years old. He wears glasses and has a long white beard that goes almost to his waist. It’s hard to determine anything about his face because so much covers it.
But his eyes are sharp and intelligent. Underestimate this plumber at your peril. He’s a smart man.
When he arrives, we start in the basement. He tells me how much it will be to fix the washer drain, and I’m delighted it’s not more. Then he continues to the apartment above mine carrying professional grade drain cleaner, the kind that’ll blind you if you get too near it.
I am downstairs, in my apartment, when I start to hear water pouring out of the ceiling. The old pipes finally disintegrated.
It’s fortunate I was there. One of my favorite sketches by my father was right underneath the dripping water. I snatched it and two other paintings nearby and put them safely in the other room. I yelled up to the plumber the pipe had broken.
He came downstairs, looked, and determined he’d have to open up the ceiling.
“How much will that cost?” I ask.
“Who knows?” he replies.
Now I want to die. Now I want to sell the house, immediately, as is. Now I am in danger of bursting into tears. Managing this house is like captaining the Titanic on dry land.
I told him I didn’t have a lot of cash this month, and wasn’t sure if I should ask him to keep working.
“Don’t worry girl, we’ll work it out. You can pay me when you get it.”
The flood of relief was short-lived. The next four hours were a nightmare.
I was writing, but as he had no helper with him, I became his helper. I handed him tools and fetched buckets while he balanced on the ladder.
We’ve got very high ceilings.
Then suddenly, black water started gushing out unexpectedly. It came down the walls and over the plumber’s entire face, beard, and upper body. His shirt was soaking wet. I got some in my hair. I knew it wasn’t from the toilet, but when black gunk is coming down the walls it doesn’t make much difference where it’s from.
He then pulled out all the old insulation from the pipe. Great heaping globs of soaking wet fiberglass fell down to the drop cloth I’d fashioned.
Finally, he got the old pipe cut with a saw, then traveled to the hardware store to buy another.
He worked between 4-5 hours, soaking wet, in filthy clothes.
But he got the pipe fixed. He and I cleaned up the mess on the floor, and he told me he’d be back Friday to install the new sink.
This is going to cost me thousands of dollars, I thought to myself.
But before he left, he said again,
“Don’t you worry now. We’ll get it fixed up.”
When he left, I called a friend and cried. The stress of the past three months finally caught up with me. But I also knew I was fortunate to have the plumber.
It’s difficult for women not to get screwed by contractors, not to be condescended to, not to feel overwhelmed when we’re on our own and things go south in a house. It’s even more difficult if you’re worried about money.
What greater words can I say than,
“He helped me.”
“Worth his weight in gold,” Fred would say.
When the plumber came back to install the new sink, he told me he was going to charge me two hours labor for the first day, and two hours for the second, plus parts.
“You cannot charge me so little,” I said.
“Well, it was a surprise the other day. I went home and took a thirty-minute hot shower.”
I wrote him a check for about ¼ of what I thought I’d owe him, and we were square.
When he was going out the door, he turned and said,
“I knew your father. He sold me a building once.”
I’ve never felt more stranded than the day my father died in 1981. The man who was always in my corner was gone.
I was not just grief-stricken, I was terrified.
Fred wrote me a beautiful letter that summer and told me you can never be prepared for death. It helped.
Forty-three years later, the plumber took care of me out of the goodness of his heart.
I give men a hard time, and on balance they definitely deserve it. But this week, I want to cheer two good men who helped.
Fred and the plumber, and a bit of Bukowski, all in the same week. It ended up not being the end of the world after all.
Your writing always strikes home with me. Today I laughed out loud, and thanked the lord that you have a good plumber! Our plumber, John, will usually come whenever Bob calls him. He too is a good old boy, and somehow that brings me comfort.
My favorite plumber story is the time, a few years ago, when the kitchen sink backed up. Bob will not allow "clog busting shit" down his pipes, they might disintegrate - as you well know. So we tried the snake - no luck. So the call went out to John. This time though, he was working on a project and wouldn't be able to get to us for days.
So we tried a recommendation from a friend. Not everyone has a Tammy as a neighbor, and this recommendation was not the best. But I had no sink, and I was desperate. He told us that there was a clog in the waste line in the basement. There was no other choice than to jack hammer the cement and clear out the pipe. We decided to sleep on it.
Meanwhile, faithful John felt bad about not getting to us, and called at 5:00 p.m. to say he was on his way over. He was able to remove a small section of pipe and snake down further. The "clog" turned out to be 2 enormous walnuts!! We concluded that some clever squirrel thought the vent pipe on the roof was a walnut safe. In any case, the clog was miraculously fixed, and John charged about $50.
A good plumber is worth his weight in gold!
I LOVE this story and those DAMNED SQUIRRELS will be the death of us!