This is an excerpt from a longer work, a travel memoir titled Wanderlust.
11/3/88 Amsterdam Airport
I just went through security, which included a surprise hand luggage check. It made me very uncomfortable and embarrassed to watch this impersonal official riffling through my dirty underwear, fingering my nightgown and thumbing through the pages of this journal—my most private, valued, and irreplaceable possession.
I held my breath, afraid he’d find the wooden pot pipe I bought for Barry—but he overlooked it. It would probably have been OK, since there was no residue in it anyway. Still, there were a few tense moments. The official looked at me searchingly, right in the eyes and said, “How are you feeling?” and almost sneeringly, “Did you have a good time in Amsterdam?”
Then I was pulled aside for a bodily pat down search. Of course, I would never be stupid enough to have anything on me. Still, it made me feel uneasy. The woman doing the search was very quick and her manner was professional. She rhetorically requested my permission, then had me stand with my arms up and my legs spread. She quickly and lightly patted me down in a very cursory way. Glad that’s over with. There’s nothing to do now but wait.
In an hour, I will board a plane from Amsterdam to London, then another from London to New York, and then the final flight from New York to North Carolina. At 8:30 PM Eastern Standard time (which is 1:30AM Amsterdam time), Jen and Tim will meet me at the Raleigh Durham Airport. They’ll drive me home along I-40, through the world of pine trees and Research Triangle Park, back to my little house with the cedar siding on Oak Avenue in Carrboro. I’ll sleep in my own bed tonight. My cat, my piano, my little black pickup truck and probably a letter from Barry will all be waiting for me.
There’s symmetry to this trip. Just as when I left North Carolina, I’m in an airport-- wearing the maroon and paisley jumper that Mindy gave me. Now, there is a small hole in the skirt where the burning ash from my joint fell in the Amsterdam hostel. Pinned to my breast is the little, round, orange and yellow dotted holograph pin that Barry bought me in Greenwich Village. On my legs is the added warmth of a pair of black tights I bought while shopping with Leah in Oxford. Atop my head is the vintage black, fedora hat, and dangling from my ears are the peacock feather earrings from the Amsterdam flea market. All of these special changes are now part of my travel costume.
I’ve taken on a new persona. I’ve led a scruffy, backpacking, temporary, transient lifestyle-- meeting others in passing, talking more about our journeys than our jobs and our everyday lives. I remember wondering before I left home, who I would be without my professional identity as a public radio person, and whether I would feel lost without it. I haven’t at all. I love this new role I’ve taken on.
This is something I’ve wanted ever since I visited Europe with my family as a teenager. I remember seeing these young, hippie backpackers. They were slightly older than me, and seemed to carry an air of adventure and mystery along with the packs on their backs. I envied the freedom of these longhaired ramblers who traveled by train, while I rode in the Saab with my parents—who repeatedly dragged me into cathedrals to look at naked cherub bottoms.
I feel very pleased and satisfied that I’ve finally had the chance to live this dream, regardless of the fact that at 31, I’m older than your average vagabond. In fact, most of my compadres were quite surprised whenever I revealed my advanced age.
I have a sense of pride in that I planned and executed this vacation entirely by myself. I completed my itinerary, which was actually quite respectable by any standards, despite my hippie travel style. I saw the National Gallery in London and the British Museum; the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay in Paris; The Rijks and Van Gogh Museums in Amsterdam. I went to a London theater, a Paris jazz club, and an Amsterdam coffee house. I rode a train up the scenic coast of Wales, and got claustrophobically squished in the Paris Metro. I hiked up Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, hung a dollar on the wall at the Bulldog in Amsterdam, and let us not forget holding hands with Barry on the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset in New York City. It’s boarding time….
I’m now sitting on the plane. Soon I’ll be airborne to London. In a few hours I will lose my latest identity, my role as a traveler—and I’ll jump into the madness of being a public radio “personality”. I’ll be programming music for the marathon (our public radio on air fundraiser)—working long hours and lecturing listeners about how they need to call 962-9862 and do their part to support the station they rely on. Such a different life! The plane is positioning for take off. It’s only an hour flight with lunch, and I have a Herald Tribune to read. More later.
11:30AM Eastern Standard Time. En route from London to New York
I feel like I’m back in America already because this is Pan Am, an American airline, and everyone around me speaks with American accents. The announcements by the pilot and flight crew are all in English with no translations, maybe because it’s London to New York—Heathrow to Kennedy. I’ve set my watch back to Eastern Standard Time. It’s 11:30AM in New York and 5:30PM in Amsterdam. I’ve been traveling for almost ten hours now, with seven more to go before I step off the plane at the Raleigh Durham Airport to be greeted by Jen and Tim.
It’s good to have this in-between time, this down time—not to feel obligated to do more walking, more sightseeing, not to worry about maximizing my limited time to tour. I’m perfectly happy to sit back with my eyes closed and doze off dreaming of Amsterdam canals or Barry’s touch…
There is nothing to do but sit and wait for time to pass. When they bring me salted peanuts, I eat. When they hand me a cup of tea, I drink it. Soon there will be a movie and I will half watch it, depending on how interesting it is. I am far from the zombies at the International Hostel, but just as much of a zombie myself—sitting in a chair passively, dreaming of far way places, looking at my watch and imagining what is happening in them.
In Oxford, Leah will soon be going home after a day at the lab. In Bruges, the bar music is playing loudly and young people are conversing, eating spaghetti and drinking beer in the smoky, friendly atmosphere. In Wales, the stores are closing as shopkeepers go home for the day. In Amsterdam, the red light district begins to pick up energy. In Connecticut, Barry is aptly handling noon rush hour at the deli. In Chapel Hill, whoever is doing my radio show is getting ready to deliver the news.
I don’t want my writing to be seen by the yammering New Yorker on my left who is driving me crazy. I have to angle my body away from him, and shield this notebook with my forearm. If I close my eyes he seems to leave me alone, but if I’m writing or reading he makes inane comments with a talent for the obvious: “We’re going through some turbulence. Is your seat belt fastened?” All he has to do is look to see that it is.
I’m trying to engage with him as little as possible. Seven hours is a long time to spend next to an irritating stranger. He says his last name is Kafka, and he claims to have some relation to that Russian writer. It turns out he writes music education books for string players and is returning from a trip to England spent promoting his books. I made the mistake of telling him about my job as a music producer and arts reporter in public radio. Spitting all over me, he held forth on the monotony of Philip Glass, John Cage’s lack of structure, the beauty of Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony and Shostakovich’s 5th.
He is a short, dark, hairy man—with such bushy eyebrows that they actually smudge his glasses. He described how their dog sings along when he and his wife perform opera excerpts at the piano. He quoted composer Edgar Varese saying, “Art is from the waist up. Entertainment is from the waist down.” He lectured and spat, and mentioned famous people he knew, dropping names and connections whenever possible. He’s trying to impress me, maybe because of my impressive job, or maybe because I’m trying to read an impressive book, ”The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann, if he would only let me. He’s amusing and pathetic in a kind of endearing way—but sitting next to him and not being allowed to read because of his constant conversation and spit spraying is driving me crazy. Turbulence, clouds, bumps, the fasten seat belt signs. I close my eyes again for privacy.
My flea market black hat is stashed under the seat in front of me. I hope it doesn’t get squished. My nose is raw from having the sniffles and constant wiping and blowing. The plane is bumping. There are dense, smoky clouds all around us. I’m less of a traveler every minute.
I feel the acceptance of my own life and routine returning. I think about going in to work for a brief period tomorrow, so I can collect my paycheck among other things. I think about paying the rent and the bills. I wonder whether the house will smell like stale cat food. I wonder whose been doing my air shift at the radio station, and whether Craig and his wife are adoptive parents yet. I wonder if Barry will be able to travel from Connecticut to spend Thanksgiving with me….
As we get closer to New York, I think more about Barry. The idea of having a life partner—for emotional and physical intimacy, as well as financial sharing makes sense. The next time I go back to Europe, I may have a lover with me. It will be an adventure too, but in an entirely different way. Now I’ve done the youth hostel bit. Maybe next time, we’ll stay in bed and breakfasts. I have to fill out a landing form now.
* * * * * * * * * *
New York, JFK Airport
I must admit, it does feel good to be back on American soil. I’m not a foreigner anymore. I just bought coffee at an airport cafeteria, paying in dollars and cents for the first time in over a month. I’m sipping from the steaming mug and staring into space. I’m so tired I’m almost stoned—a pleasant sort of disorientation. It’s actually 11:00PM for my body—yet strangely, I find myself in a New York City airport at dinnertime.
I’m still an anonymous traveler, sitting here with my backpack beside my chair, not knowing anybody. The atmosphere is still quite international. The announcements over the loudspeaker are given in a variety of languages, even the English sometimes tinged with an accent. There’s a German couple at the table next to mine, bantering over burgers and fries. A nice, young, European-looking man with a backpack smiled and nodded as he passed my way. We recognized each other as fellow alternative travelers—not tourists. I still look the role, and I guess for the next few hours at least, I still fit it.
I’m still wearing my travel costume. I still have my pack beside me. Within its gray canvass are all the personal possessions in my world. It doesn’t matter that they are mostly dirty clothes. I don’t want to give it up. It’s been my home, my security—part of me, my turtle shell. Soon it will be over. Already, it is ending.
When I first stepped off the plane into this New York City airport, my first thought was to call Barry. Being back here reminds me of my time with him. But he’s probably busy handling dinner at the deli now. Anyway, I’m so tired that I really have nothing to say. I don’t know even know how I’ll respond when Jen and Tim greet me at the gate at RDU and ask, “How was your trip?” How can I tell them that I’ve journeyed way beyond the bounds of my normal everyday existence? How can I tell them I’ve taken on a new identity?
I’ll have to summarize and trivialize and say “fine”. I’ll have to label the highlights and condense it into a few appealing sentences and stories to repeat at parties and to the people at work.
I hope that when I get home, I’ll have a little time to just absorb it all—let it sink in, remember everything. I’m so glad I kept this journal because I want to be able to conjure up memories in detail and hang out in them— to go back to the bunkroom with the faded Indian bedspreads, to walk down the narrow hallway and descend the steep stairs. I want to savor late afternoon light in the Luxembourg gardens, to hear a steam train whistle and click over the mountains of Wales. These are the kinds of details that people who ask me politely about my vacation are probably not all that interested in.
Here at Kennedy Airport, a lady in a bright red blouse smokes a Marlboro. A baby squeals. Outside the picture windows, the sinking sun glows over the pavement and glints off of the airplanes that wait at the gate. In the distance, Manhattan skyscrapers poke through pink clouds. An American Airlines jumbo jet roars off the runway.
The sun is setting. My trip is ending. One more plane, one more airport, one more car ride and I’ll be home.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Liquid Fire
I wanted to take a bath to soothe my aching back. It’s just so nice to have this time to relax over the holidays, not to have to stack little tables and chairs, pour paint into little jars, to bend down and pick up toys, wipe noses, rush to clean up spills or open yogurt containers. A celebratory and luxurious bath was definitely in order.
First, I would scrub out the tub, something I haven’t had time to do in awhile. I walked passed the Christmas tree, with its glowing colored lights and went into kitchen to get the Comet—which is what my mother always used for bathroom fixtures. She always said there was “nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t take care of”-- that if you put enough muscle and effort into it, the grime would soon be gone. I tilted the green shaker jar with its magic cleaning powder and began to scour away. As I worked rhythmically scratching the powder with the scrubby, a childhood jingle I used to enjoy singing with my friends kept going through my head. “Comet, makes you vomit. So get some Comet and vomit today!”
I finished scrubbing, and turned on the water, ready to rinse and admire my work. But what’s this? The water refused to go down. It just sat in the tub, the white powder floating on top. I remembered the drain had been slow lately, but it had always worked up until now. Bummer! There was no way I could take a bath under these circumstances. I took a quick shower instead, wading ankle deep, letting the hot-as-possible water stream down over my back, trying to release the aching knot inside it.
An aching back and a clogged bathtub are not a good combination, especially on Christmas Eve day when everything is supposed to be cheery and bright. Boy, I could sure use a handyman. I thought of the old Ethel Waters blues song about her handyman, with all its suggestive lyrics:
“He threads my needle, creams my wheat
Heats my heater, chops my meat.
My man is such a handy man.
He flaps my flapjacks, cleans off the table
feeds my horses in the stable.
My man is such a handy man.”
Now where could I find my own handyman, so I could sing
"He takes his snake out and unclogs my drain.
He rubs my back
to ease my pain
My man is such a handy man”
I called my friend Judy, and laughingly asked her if she knew a handyman with a big snake who could unclog my drain—but the innuendo was lost on her. She had no time to talk tubs. She was in the midst of an argument with her teenage daughter over the price of Ugh brand boots.
Christmas Eve day is NOT a good time to call a plumber. They would probably charge me time and a half to do it. This would be hard to justify, since a clogged bathtub is hardly an emergency. Yet, I so longed to soak in that healing hot tub. I had been so looking forward to using the aromatherapy lavender bubble bath that one of my co-teachers had given me as a holiday gift…
Gradually, the solution dawned on me: I would fix it myself! I would be like mild mannered Clark Kent stepping into his phone booth. Middle aged preschool teacher emerges as “Super ma’am” who can do anything, who can rid the world of bathtub clogs. Ta-da!
I searched on line, clicking on FixItAllYourself.Com. and found step by step instructions for clogging a bathtub drain. “A clogged drain in the bathtub causes water to collect while showering”, the article explained. Ah, yes, I understood. The first step, was to remove “any visible hair or scum”. I used to be quite adept at this process when I lived with my ex-husband in our modern house. There, unscrewing the top of the drain revealed a divider just below the surface. You could easily see the hair hanging over it. It was a simple procedure to take tweezers and grasp gross globs of it out periodically. I was used to doing this. My hair is thinning at an alarming rate, and there are always hairs clinging to the sides of the bathtub and washing down the drain at the end of my showers.
Now, in this old house, where I have been living for only 6 months as the sole proprietess, the drain opening is small and angled with no divider. I thought guiltily about all these months of showering, just letting my hair wash way, way down, as if it was disappearing by magic, as if there would never be any consequences to my irresponsible action-- as if because I couldn’t see the hair, it didn’t exist. I should have known better. I pinched the tweezers through the now lukewarm standing water and poked them blindly into the drain. After many tries, I did finally manage to extract a small amount of scummy hair near the surface. But the water still sat in the tub.
The next step, according to my article, was to find something long, like a coat hanger and attempt to clear the drain with that. I untwisted a metal hanger, turning it round and round. This action took me back to fond memories of preparing long wire hangers to roast hot dogs over the campfire when Noah, now a teenager, was little. I figured out how to remove the “overflow plate” under the bathtub faucet, and learned out that I could stick the wire down that way and it would pop up out of the drain opening. Wow! The two were connected. I was so proud of myself for making this significant discovery. I poked my wire in and slid it up and down repeatedly.
Like a douser, I was sensing the source of the clog. I thought I could perceive some scummy matter. I imagined I was breaking it up, with my repeated twisting and pulling, but after many tries, only a few gray flakes emerged. Below the bathtub was a deeper, hidden place where the pipe curves, a place my clumsy coat hanger was unable to probe. The water still sat in the tub.
The next step was to try a “plumber’s friend”. I pushed the plunger into the standing water—hearing the strong, satisfying suctioning sound of something being accomplished. Water splurted excitedly out of the overflow plate. The standing water seemed to go down by a fraction of an inch. But bottom line-- the water still sat in the tub.
I realized, that what I probably needed was a true plumber’s “snake”— like the one my ex-husband used to use periodically to unclog the sink. So, I made a Christmas Eve trip to Home Depot. Thankfully, it was open and filled with a surprising number of people doing last minute shopping. In the plumbing aisle, were heavy-duty snakes with metal coils that didn’t even look like they’d fit down my bathtub drain’s small opening. Then there were motorized contraptions made by “Rigid” that power the clog open. They deeply drive and retract, drive and retract the cable. I couldn’t seem to find one like that little rubber snake that Gary used to use—something like that seemed less intimidating and more familiar and manageable to me.
Finally, I settled on a long, white plastic strip with jagged edges. It cost just over $2.00 and was supposed to be disposable, although I didn’t see why you couldn’t just wash it and re-use it. It was low tech enough for me to understand its function, and skinny enough to push down into my drain. I could imagine its saw-like teeth hooking all kinds of hair and scum while I twisted it. I glanced at the shelf of chemicals too, but everything I’d read online said to avoid them. Professionals don’t pour toxic chemicals down the drain. They use their tools and their muscles to unclog them. I have to admit I was somewhat tempted by the environmentally friendly citrus potion, but I figured it probably wouldn’t work anyway. On my way out of Home Depot, I picked up some new filters for my furnace. Ms. Handy Ma’am does it all. Why not?
Back at home, I told myself I really should take a little break. It was Christmas Eve after all. I had presents to wrap. There were dishes in the sink to attack--anything, just to get away from the drain for a little while. But this was becoming an obsession, and I couldn’t wait to see if my new tool would do the trick.
I pulled the long skinny plastic rod out of its wrapping. I followed the instructions on the package. I pushed and twisted, pushed and twisted, until it had gone as far as it could go, and only the little white handle was sticking out of the top of the drain. I thought I could feel something at the end. Very exciting. I jerked it out strongly and quickly like a fishing line that has just hooked a great catch. Low and behold—there, dangling from the end was a clump of soggy hair. Hooray! I felt triumphant. But nothing else happened. I ran some hot water and the clog only seemed to be getting worse. The water still sat in the tub.
The last part of my FixItYourself.Com article, talked about ways to maintain the drain once it was clear. So, if I had actually pulled up some of the blockage, maybe I should try these? Boiling water from the teakettle, baking soda and vinegar, more plunging. Nothing.
Discouraged, I rubbed my aching lower back and looked around. Strewn about my bathroom were a long coat hanger, a dirty towel from wiping off gray gunk, a teakettle, a box of baking soda, a can of comet, and my white plastic drain opener. Ms. Handy Ma’am was failing at her mission. What do I do now? Where do I turn? Where, oh where was Santa Claus? I imagined he was the ultimate handy man— the one who could fix it all in a twinkling with a hearty “Ho, ho, ho!” But Santa was nowhere in sight. Perhaps I needed to call a plumber after all…
Finally, as a last resort, I called my ex-husband, Gary—the authority on all home maintenance operations. He went through a list of various things to try: coat hanger, plumber’s friend, boiling water. It gave me a sense of competence to reply that I had actually already tried all of these things. He told me that there used to be a plumbing snake, just the right size, hanging in the wall of the little old tool shed beside the house. He and I used to own this house together. For the past decade, it had been a rental house, and he had done much of the maintenance on it.
I took the phone into the shed, which was built in the 1930’s. It was dark, permeated by a musty smell, with very solid wooden shelves and huge antique nails sticking out at various points in the wall. There were various tools like rusty old saws and hedge clippers hanging from some of them. Gary swore that there used to be a plumbing snake in here. I looked above the workbench, as he told me—and there—I’m not kidding, was an actual snakeskin hanging there on the wall. I mean a real skin from a real live snake! Unbelievable. But there was no plumbing snake to be found.
He asked me if I’d tried Draino. I said I had been worried about damaging the pipes with this caustic stuff, and about the toxicity of it. But he said he thought it might be OK, and I should give it a try.
Then, Gary reminded me that our old tenants had had a serious problem with roots growing in the pipes and clogging them, and that we had once paid $2,000.00 for a man with a backhoe to unearth and clear out some the terra cotta pipes that were used for plumbing in the 1930’s. Terra cotta—that same material used for plant pots had apparently been used for plumbing during the Great Depression, when metal was too precious. Strong tree roots could push right down into them and block them. So that might be the real culprit—not my innocent hair, but sinister tree roots.
I was feeling pretty stressed at this point. Rather than get back in the car in search of Draino, and a better snake, I decided it might help me release some anxiety to walk the half mile down the road to Hillsborough’s locally owned old fashioned hardware store—Dual Supply—which must be one of the last of its kind in the whole country. It was now late afternoon, almost five o’clock on Christmas Eve. The shoppers who had thronged the streets of downtown Hillsborough earlier in the day, when I drove by on my way to Home Depot had thinned. People were heading home.
Dual Supply was dark inside and there was a “Closed for Christmas” sign on the door. Yet I was heartened, when I tried the door, to find that it was still actually open. Everything in Dual Supply is just jumbled on the shelves. There are no attractive consumer displays. They are crammed with all kinds of tools and drills and hoses, and fluids for cars in seemingly random order. Only the inhabitants know how to find things here. I did not see any Draino or plumbing snakes.
Way in the back, a woman was making the last minute purchase of a chainsaw, probably a gift for her handyman husband. As I waited for help, I wondered: why had I walked out on Gary, my own handyman, after 15 years of marriage? What would it be like if we got back together? Would I appreciate him more? But he has a girlfriend now, so there was no chance of us ever getting back together.
I waited by the cluttered desk in the back, “May I help you?” asked the kind gray-haired man with the round belly. This brought tears to my eyes because I was not only desperate to unclog my drain, I was lonely on Christmas Eve. This man reminded me, not just a little, of Santa Claus. Holding back the tears, I described my severe blockage to him and all of my efforts to clear it with the plumber’s friend, the jagged plastic strip, and the coat hanger. I told him I feared it was aggressive tree roots invading the terra cotta. “Do you have a special kind of snake for older plumbing?” I inquired, trying not to sound too desperate, “Or some Draino, perhaps?”
He disappeared into the back room, and emerged a few seconds later with a big, red bottle wrapped in plastic. It was labeled “Liquid Fire” and had all kinds of danger and caution signs on it— dire warnings of blindness and burning. I was afraid to even touch the bottle. It looked like it was probably illegal. But he assured me it would do the trick. “It ain’t the tree roots”, he explained reassuringly, “or NONE of your drains would be working”. Another middle-aged man who had appeared in line behind me concurred. He spoke of his daughter clogging the drain with her long hair. “Santa” instructed me to take the plumber’s friend and plunge the drain repeatedly until all the standing water went down. He assured me that if I kept trying, it would. Then, he said to pour just a very small amount of “liquid fire” down the drain, being very careful not to let it overflow over the top because it could “eat the ceramic”. I thanked him, and handed him $10 from the stash of Christmas cash that I had been saving to stuff in my son’s stocking. I began the trek home in the cool breeze, the December sun setting on Christmas Eve, clutching my red bottle of liquid fire.
I went back into the bathroom and read all the warnings on the label again in detail—the need for safety goggles, and the admonition not to use it in combination with other chemicals. Like baking soda and Comet, I wondered? Would there be an explosion? Still, I was determined to try it. I had spent the whole day on this. I was not about to give up now.
I set the bottle down, picked up the plumber’s friend and plunged hard and furiously, until the water level lowered a little. Santa had told me to wait and be patient. Rather than stand there and watch it drain, I went ahead and put the new filter in the air-exchanger. I plunged some more, waited some more, wrapped a few gifts. Plunged some more, waited some more, and did the dishes. Slowly, ever so slowly, the water was descending. Finally, there was no more standing water in the tub, just water inside the drain.
Now, the moment of truth had arrived. Slowly and cautiously I unscrewed the childproof cap on the top of the ominous red bottle, being careful to turn my head away and hold it at arm’s length. I don’t own any plastic gloves or safety goggles. I was going “naked”.
I poured slowly and carefully, being careful not to look down the drain, for fear of being blinded, just letting a little trickle down. A harsh chemical smell arose, like rotten eggs—followed a faint gurgling. Dare I add more? What’s this? Intense and active bubbling, followed by splashing and sloshing. I heard a sound, like the relief of a scary almost overflowing toilet that has finally flushed. Something had actually happened here! Yet I knew I must wait the requisite 15 minutes to follow the instructions and really give the stuff a chance to work. As I waited, I played some Christmas carols on the piano. Dusk was falling and it was actually beginning to feel like Christmas. And then---the miracle!
I turned on the faucet, and the water went down quickly and smoothly, better than it had ever worked before. No standing water at all in the tub. Yes, there is a Santa Claus! My handy man had come. The presents were wrapped, the air filter changed, the dishes done, and the tub unclogged, and I had enjoyed playing the piano. Even my back felt a little better. I stooped to pick up the teakettle, the Comet, the baking soda, the plunger, the towel, the coat hanger and the plastic drain opener, I took the bottle of Liquid Fire out to the old shed, reverently placing it on the shelf under the snakeskin.
Just then, my teenage son arrived home. “So what did you do all day?” he asked me. “Not much”, I replied, “just unclogged the bathtub drain”.
First, I would scrub out the tub, something I haven’t had time to do in awhile. I walked passed the Christmas tree, with its glowing colored lights and went into kitchen to get the Comet—which is what my mother always used for bathroom fixtures. She always said there was “nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t take care of”-- that if you put enough muscle and effort into it, the grime would soon be gone. I tilted the green shaker jar with its magic cleaning powder and began to scour away. As I worked rhythmically scratching the powder with the scrubby, a childhood jingle I used to enjoy singing with my friends kept going through my head. “Comet, makes you vomit. So get some Comet and vomit today!”
I finished scrubbing, and turned on the water, ready to rinse and admire my work. But what’s this? The water refused to go down. It just sat in the tub, the white powder floating on top. I remembered the drain had been slow lately, but it had always worked up until now. Bummer! There was no way I could take a bath under these circumstances. I took a quick shower instead, wading ankle deep, letting the hot-as-possible water stream down over my back, trying to release the aching knot inside it.
An aching back and a clogged bathtub are not a good combination, especially on Christmas Eve day when everything is supposed to be cheery and bright. Boy, I could sure use a handyman. I thought of the old Ethel Waters blues song about her handyman, with all its suggestive lyrics:
“He threads my needle, creams my wheat
Heats my heater, chops my meat.
My man is such a handy man.
He flaps my flapjacks, cleans off the table
feeds my horses in the stable.
My man is such a handy man.”
Now where could I find my own handyman, so I could sing
"He takes his snake out and unclogs my drain.
He rubs my back
to ease my pain
My man is such a handy man”
I called my friend Judy, and laughingly asked her if she knew a handyman with a big snake who could unclog my drain—but the innuendo was lost on her. She had no time to talk tubs. She was in the midst of an argument with her teenage daughter over the price of Ugh brand boots.
Christmas Eve day is NOT a good time to call a plumber. They would probably charge me time and a half to do it. This would be hard to justify, since a clogged bathtub is hardly an emergency. Yet, I so longed to soak in that healing hot tub. I had been so looking forward to using the aromatherapy lavender bubble bath that one of my co-teachers had given me as a holiday gift…
Gradually, the solution dawned on me: I would fix it myself! I would be like mild mannered Clark Kent stepping into his phone booth. Middle aged preschool teacher emerges as “Super ma’am” who can do anything, who can rid the world of bathtub clogs. Ta-da!
I searched on line, clicking on FixItAllYourself.Com. and found step by step instructions for clogging a bathtub drain. “A clogged drain in the bathtub causes water to collect while showering”, the article explained. Ah, yes, I understood. The first step, was to remove “any visible hair or scum”. I used to be quite adept at this process when I lived with my ex-husband in our modern house. There, unscrewing the top of the drain revealed a divider just below the surface. You could easily see the hair hanging over it. It was a simple procedure to take tweezers and grasp gross globs of it out periodically. I was used to doing this. My hair is thinning at an alarming rate, and there are always hairs clinging to the sides of the bathtub and washing down the drain at the end of my showers.
Now, in this old house, where I have been living for only 6 months as the sole proprietess, the drain opening is small and angled with no divider. I thought guiltily about all these months of showering, just letting my hair wash way, way down, as if it was disappearing by magic, as if there would never be any consequences to my irresponsible action-- as if because I couldn’t see the hair, it didn’t exist. I should have known better. I pinched the tweezers through the now lukewarm standing water and poked them blindly into the drain. After many tries, I did finally manage to extract a small amount of scummy hair near the surface. But the water still sat in the tub.
The next step, according to my article, was to find something long, like a coat hanger and attempt to clear the drain with that. I untwisted a metal hanger, turning it round and round. This action took me back to fond memories of preparing long wire hangers to roast hot dogs over the campfire when Noah, now a teenager, was little. I figured out how to remove the “overflow plate” under the bathtub faucet, and learned out that I could stick the wire down that way and it would pop up out of the drain opening. Wow! The two were connected. I was so proud of myself for making this significant discovery. I poked my wire in and slid it up and down repeatedly.
Like a douser, I was sensing the source of the clog. I thought I could perceive some scummy matter. I imagined I was breaking it up, with my repeated twisting and pulling, but after many tries, only a few gray flakes emerged. Below the bathtub was a deeper, hidden place where the pipe curves, a place my clumsy coat hanger was unable to probe. The water still sat in the tub.
The next step was to try a “plumber’s friend”. I pushed the plunger into the standing water—hearing the strong, satisfying suctioning sound of something being accomplished. Water splurted excitedly out of the overflow plate. The standing water seemed to go down by a fraction of an inch. But bottom line-- the water still sat in the tub.
I realized, that what I probably needed was a true plumber’s “snake”— like the one my ex-husband used to use periodically to unclog the sink. So, I made a Christmas Eve trip to Home Depot. Thankfully, it was open and filled with a surprising number of people doing last minute shopping. In the plumbing aisle, were heavy-duty snakes with metal coils that didn’t even look like they’d fit down my bathtub drain’s small opening. Then there were motorized contraptions made by “Rigid” that power the clog open. They deeply drive and retract, drive and retract the cable. I couldn’t seem to find one like that little rubber snake that Gary used to use—something like that seemed less intimidating and more familiar and manageable to me.
Finally, I settled on a long, white plastic strip with jagged edges. It cost just over $2.00 and was supposed to be disposable, although I didn’t see why you couldn’t just wash it and re-use it. It was low tech enough for me to understand its function, and skinny enough to push down into my drain. I could imagine its saw-like teeth hooking all kinds of hair and scum while I twisted it. I glanced at the shelf of chemicals too, but everything I’d read online said to avoid them. Professionals don’t pour toxic chemicals down the drain. They use their tools and their muscles to unclog them. I have to admit I was somewhat tempted by the environmentally friendly citrus potion, but I figured it probably wouldn’t work anyway. On my way out of Home Depot, I picked up some new filters for my furnace. Ms. Handy Ma’am does it all. Why not?
Back at home, I told myself I really should take a little break. It was Christmas Eve after all. I had presents to wrap. There were dishes in the sink to attack--anything, just to get away from the drain for a little while. But this was becoming an obsession, and I couldn’t wait to see if my new tool would do the trick.
I pulled the long skinny plastic rod out of its wrapping. I followed the instructions on the package. I pushed and twisted, pushed and twisted, until it had gone as far as it could go, and only the little white handle was sticking out of the top of the drain. I thought I could feel something at the end. Very exciting. I jerked it out strongly and quickly like a fishing line that has just hooked a great catch. Low and behold—there, dangling from the end was a clump of soggy hair. Hooray! I felt triumphant. But nothing else happened. I ran some hot water and the clog only seemed to be getting worse. The water still sat in the tub.
The last part of my FixItYourself.Com article, talked about ways to maintain the drain once it was clear. So, if I had actually pulled up some of the blockage, maybe I should try these? Boiling water from the teakettle, baking soda and vinegar, more plunging. Nothing.
Discouraged, I rubbed my aching lower back and looked around. Strewn about my bathroom were a long coat hanger, a dirty towel from wiping off gray gunk, a teakettle, a box of baking soda, a can of comet, and my white plastic drain opener. Ms. Handy Ma’am was failing at her mission. What do I do now? Where do I turn? Where, oh where was Santa Claus? I imagined he was the ultimate handy man— the one who could fix it all in a twinkling with a hearty “Ho, ho, ho!” But Santa was nowhere in sight. Perhaps I needed to call a plumber after all…
Finally, as a last resort, I called my ex-husband, Gary—the authority on all home maintenance operations. He went through a list of various things to try: coat hanger, plumber’s friend, boiling water. It gave me a sense of competence to reply that I had actually already tried all of these things. He told me that there used to be a plumbing snake, just the right size, hanging in the wall of the little old tool shed beside the house. He and I used to own this house together. For the past decade, it had been a rental house, and he had done much of the maintenance on it.
I took the phone into the shed, which was built in the 1930’s. It was dark, permeated by a musty smell, with very solid wooden shelves and huge antique nails sticking out at various points in the wall. There were various tools like rusty old saws and hedge clippers hanging from some of them. Gary swore that there used to be a plumbing snake in here. I looked above the workbench, as he told me—and there—I’m not kidding, was an actual snakeskin hanging there on the wall. I mean a real skin from a real live snake! Unbelievable. But there was no plumbing snake to be found.
He asked me if I’d tried Draino. I said I had been worried about damaging the pipes with this caustic stuff, and about the toxicity of it. But he said he thought it might be OK, and I should give it a try.
Then, Gary reminded me that our old tenants had had a serious problem with roots growing in the pipes and clogging them, and that we had once paid $2,000.00 for a man with a backhoe to unearth and clear out some the terra cotta pipes that were used for plumbing in the 1930’s. Terra cotta—that same material used for plant pots had apparently been used for plumbing during the Great Depression, when metal was too precious. Strong tree roots could push right down into them and block them. So that might be the real culprit—not my innocent hair, but sinister tree roots.
I was feeling pretty stressed at this point. Rather than get back in the car in search of Draino, and a better snake, I decided it might help me release some anxiety to walk the half mile down the road to Hillsborough’s locally owned old fashioned hardware store—Dual Supply—which must be one of the last of its kind in the whole country. It was now late afternoon, almost five o’clock on Christmas Eve. The shoppers who had thronged the streets of downtown Hillsborough earlier in the day, when I drove by on my way to Home Depot had thinned. People were heading home.
Dual Supply was dark inside and there was a “Closed for Christmas” sign on the door. Yet I was heartened, when I tried the door, to find that it was still actually open. Everything in Dual Supply is just jumbled on the shelves. There are no attractive consumer displays. They are crammed with all kinds of tools and drills and hoses, and fluids for cars in seemingly random order. Only the inhabitants know how to find things here. I did not see any Draino or plumbing snakes.
Way in the back, a woman was making the last minute purchase of a chainsaw, probably a gift for her handyman husband. As I waited for help, I wondered: why had I walked out on Gary, my own handyman, after 15 years of marriage? What would it be like if we got back together? Would I appreciate him more? But he has a girlfriend now, so there was no chance of us ever getting back together.
I waited by the cluttered desk in the back, “May I help you?” asked the kind gray-haired man with the round belly. This brought tears to my eyes because I was not only desperate to unclog my drain, I was lonely on Christmas Eve. This man reminded me, not just a little, of Santa Claus. Holding back the tears, I described my severe blockage to him and all of my efforts to clear it with the plumber’s friend, the jagged plastic strip, and the coat hanger. I told him I feared it was aggressive tree roots invading the terra cotta. “Do you have a special kind of snake for older plumbing?” I inquired, trying not to sound too desperate, “Or some Draino, perhaps?”
He disappeared into the back room, and emerged a few seconds later with a big, red bottle wrapped in plastic. It was labeled “Liquid Fire” and had all kinds of danger and caution signs on it— dire warnings of blindness and burning. I was afraid to even touch the bottle. It looked like it was probably illegal. But he assured me it would do the trick. “It ain’t the tree roots”, he explained reassuringly, “or NONE of your drains would be working”. Another middle-aged man who had appeared in line behind me concurred. He spoke of his daughter clogging the drain with her long hair. “Santa” instructed me to take the plumber’s friend and plunge the drain repeatedly until all the standing water went down. He assured me that if I kept trying, it would. Then, he said to pour just a very small amount of “liquid fire” down the drain, being very careful not to let it overflow over the top because it could “eat the ceramic”. I thanked him, and handed him $10 from the stash of Christmas cash that I had been saving to stuff in my son’s stocking. I began the trek home in the cool breeze, the December sun setting on Christmas Eve, clutching my red bottle of liquid fire.
I went back into the bathroom and read all the warnings on the label again in detail—the need for safety goggles, and the admonition not to use it in combination with other chemicals. Like baking soda and Comet, I wondered? Would there be an explosion? Still, I was determined to try it. I had spent the whole day on this. I was not about to give up now.
I set the bottle down, picked up the plumber’s friend and plunged hard and furiously, until the water level lowered a little. Santa had told me to wait and be patient. Rather than stand there and watch it drain, I went ahead and put the new filter in the air-exchanger. I plunged some more, waited some more, wrapped a few gifts. Plunged some more, waited some more, and did the dishes. Slowly, ever so slowly, the water was descending. Finally, there was no more standing water in the tub, just water inside the drain.
Now, the moment of truth had arrived. Slowly and cautiously I unscrewed the childproof cap on the top of the ominous red bottle, being careful to turn my head away and hold it at arm’s length. I don’t own any plastic gloves or safety goggles. I was going “naked”.
I poured slowly and carefully, being careful not to look down the drain, for fear of being blinded, just letting a little trickle down. A harsh chemical smell arose, like rotten eggs—followed a faint gurgling. Dare I add more? What’s this? Intense and active bubbling, followed by splashing and sloshing. I heard a sound, like the relief of a scary almost overflowing toilet that has finally flushed. Something had actually happened here! Yet I knew I must wait the requisite 15 minutes to follow the instructions and really give the stuff a chance to work. As I waited, I played some Christmas carols on the piano. Dusk was falling and it was actually beginning to feel like Christmas. And then---the miracle!
I turned on the faucet, and the water went down quickly and smoothly, better than it had ever worked before. No standing water at all in the tub. Yes, there is a Santa Claus! My handy man had come. The presents were wrapped, the air filter changed, the dishes done, and the tub unclogged, and I had enjoyed playing the piano. Even my back felt a little better. I stooped to pick up the teakettle, the Comet, the baking soda, the plunger, the towel, the coat hanger and the plastic drain opener, I took the bottle of Liquid Fire out to the old shed, reverently placing it on the shelf under the snakeskin.
Just then, my teenage son arrived home. “So what did you do all day?” he asked me. “Not much”, I replied, “just unclogged the bathtub drain”.
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