"The bike went up, then it went down"

I tried out my new street-tee. It didn’t work, as I well expected. The opening at the end, where it grabs the valve key, is a little too wide. I will heat it to red-hot with my torch, close the opening to the point where it will fit more snugly against the valve, and try again.

I cut away the old cast-iron waste pipe that once led from the toilet. Down in the basement, I banged on it with my heavy maul until it started to break apart at the connections. Then I banged on it some more, finally pulling away the curved section leading down from the bathroom to the main section of pipe. The main section extends down along the basement wall, disappears through the north wall of the house to join the big sewer out in the street. I once probed this section with a video camera, thinking that I could fix a problem I was having with a perpetually stuck toilet. I had all the high-tech gear—the snake with the video camera and light on the end, coiling its way through the pipe, but all I could see was the insides of a very old sewer line. It looked fine, no blockage that I could see. The machine I was using even came with a videotape recorder, so that I could record the action of going through the sewer line. When I finally got a professional to come out and look at my problem, he informed me that I needed a new toilet. This is a fairly typical scenario when it comes to an amateur trying to handle an unfamiliar problem: All of the far-fetched possibilities come to mind; the theories are endless as to what the source of the problem might be. In the end it is usually solved simply and quickly by the trained hand of an experienced professional.

After I’d finished the small amount of work to remove the sections of waste pipe, I went outside to throw the scraps of material into the back of the truck. There was a commotion.
“Stop! Come back here!”
A neighbor was calling out to a thief that had just stolen his son’s bicycle. The young bike-thief and the bicycle were disappearing over another neighbor’s fence a few houses down. The thief was not interested in stopping.
The man giving chase came close to my yard. Plodding along in his stocking feet, he picked his way delicately over the tufts of grass that make up the uneven ground. Apparently he had not thought to put on shoes before taking off.
“Want to use my phone?” I asked, thinking he might want to call the police—since this was the kind of thing they specialized in.
“Yes, yes—“ he grabbed the phone, called the emergency number, gave the person on the other end the particulars of the situation. He handed the phone back to me, headed off in the direction the bike-thief had taken.

I walked out front, thought I’d see how things were unfolding. The half-wit and her grandkids were there in the driveway. She was holding a garden hose, spraying water onto the car. This was the white car that the good lord had sent them. I wanted to have some fun.
“Did you see the bike?”
“What bike?” She paused with the hose, her mouth open in bewilderment.
“A man just had his bike stolen.” I said.
“Your bike was stolt?” She asked.
“No—a man’s bike,” I replied—knowing that this would only add to the confusion.
“What man?”
I glanced at the road, a few feet away at the end of the driveway. At that very moment the man in question was running by in his white socks, his shoeless feet padding softly on the street.
“That man,” I said, pointing to the white-socked man running by.
“He stolt your bike?”
This went on for a little while, each exchange making less and less sense. Then it was the grandson, the little boy who answers everything I say with the same bewildered, “Huh?”

“Eirf who whaf bake dat ware bo?”

He was asking where the bike went. There was really no way to explain; everything I utter is absolutely incomprehensible to the little boy. I said, truthfully: “The bike went up, then it went down.” The bike actually did go up and down, as it made its way across the fence.

“Huh?”

The house is now mostly cut off from its water supply and sewer outlet. It still has electricity and—for now—I see no reason to sever it from that source of power. The light helps me see what I’m doing, for one thing. Likewise, the gas line is still hooked up, although I’ve shut off the valve inside the house. Since the fixtures are mostly removed from the bathroom, it remains to get the tub moved out. I am not looking forward to this; these things are made of heavy cast iron, don’t even have to be fastened in place because they are so hideously heavy. You just set it where you want it and hook up the plumbing. I’ll need to remove it, however, before taking apart the old pine floor.