HIS PLUMBNESS RETURNETH!

The phone rang, waking me from a deep resting of my eyes. Having gotten up very early that morning for the trip up to Purchase NY to drop off my wife’s son, #2, I had a busy day and was waiting for the call that would send me off for more.

His plumbness had promised to call if he was able to get a part for mom’s bathroom bowl and we arranged the time. Calling Tessie my older sister (Much older), off I went to meet her at mom’s house and the eminent arrival of his eminence. 

I’ve met important people before, celebrities, and men and women from all callings of life and notoriety, but plumbers… that’s another ticket! His Plumbness knocks and enters with Rabbit Feet his trusty companion and they just march off to go to work, and the fun began!

Rabbit Feet, his trusty sidekick comes in with a blowtorch and tank, and goes into the basement where the action will take place once they undo the toilet, and so we are regulated to the sidelines to await our fate.

The pounding begins, the clanking and grinding of their labors, proving that they are on the job. Soon his Highness, Nick comes upstairs and shows me the copper piping he has just removed, indicating the holes from years of corrosion and use! I look and make some comment and off he goes. A half hour later Rabbit Foot comes up with another pipe and the same thing happens, the man is as honest as the day is long! He advised that some of the things I thought needed work weren’t necessary and that I should probably leave them alone!

Then he starts to use the torch, and the house, my mother’s house, the house where you can’t sit on the living room furniture without getting a wooden spoon across your head is filled with smoke! It is getting heavy, and smoky and hard to see and breath!

Suddenly the need to clear the air occurs as I rush into the bathroom and see where the toilet has been moved, there is flames leaping out of the hole where the toilet seat was. Tess, my older sister (much older) is busy waving a towel at the fire alarm that is now screaming “Fire… Fire…” the alarm blearing and then more “Fire… Fire…” as I reach for the bathroom window and open it to get some of the smoke out. His plumbness undoes the alarm and says: “sorry!” A simple “oops!” would have sufficed.

After a few hours of work, the ordeal is finally over, and the bathroom looks like no one was ever there! Spotless and clean and all is in working order. He is pointing to the inside of the tank of the toilet to a small impression of letters that says: “February 1^st, 1960”. Nick the Plumber looks at me and says: “THAT is when this little beauty was made, they don’t make them like this anymore.” He then replaces the cover to the tank and lifts the toilet seat and flushes.

“Now THAT’s a flush!” he says.

All this for only $860.00!