Sunday, September 11, 2016

Pipes and Anniversaries







             Pipes and Anniversaries

I was out of work on this date 15 years ago.  I had spent almost twenty years working for a giant telecommunications company and had been “let go” just a short time earlier.  The company was in a turbulent period due to mergers, acquisitions and other corporate shenanigans and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with not enough “friends in high places” I guess.

I was marched out in early July, six months short of my twentieth anniversary, the naïve faithful employee no longer needed, and was diligently pursuing acquiring another position.  In English, gentle reader, that’s known as looking for a new job.

That day, my wife and I were on our way north on I-77 here in Ohio, me heading for an appointment with a “head hunter” in an eastern Cleveland suburb, my wife on a week’s-long vacation just riding along to keep me company.  The car radio was on a Cleveland station and we were listening to the Howard Stern program.  Howard was broadcasting from New York at that time.  I was only halfway listening to the program, concentrating more on the highway and the upcoming appointment, so I guess I missed his first mention of some sort of plane crashing into the World Trade Center.  But as Howard blithered on about this event, some part of my thought processes clicked and my attention shifted to the radio and I started listening more intently.  At first I though it was one of Howard’s humorous “bits”.  He was legendary for doing some outrageous stuff, and this kinda sounded like one of them.  He kept going on and on about the plane and how this was no accident and how we were now at war and other observations about the event.  I was listening more intently then when he reported that the second plane had hit and I realized that this wasn’t a bit.  This was real, and terrible things were happening just a few hundred miles to our east.  I flipped through the radio dial at that time and soon verified the terrible story was true.

We soon arrived at the suburban office where my interview was to take place.  My wife stayed in our car listening to the radio and I entered the building.  Most of the employees of this particular headhunter were gathered around a television in the lobby watching the events of that day unfold.  The details of what was happening were still a bit sketchy at that time, but the visuals on the television were appalling.  One lady broke away from the group, wiping her tears, to find out what I wanted and, after I told her about my appointment, she let me to another room and gathered my information.  She was a nice lady and I’m sure that the company tried to find me a new job in the weeks to follow, but right then her heart and mind really weren’t in synch with my quest for employment.  She wanted to be back in front of the TV with her fellow employees.  We parted cordially, she returning to the group around the television and I back to my car.

My wife mentioned on the drive home that she had seen an airplane acting strangely while I was in the building, making a quite odd-looking U-turn in the sky and changing from a westerly course to one back east.  We later learned that this was probably the airliner which not long after crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

We spent a lot of time in front of the television that day and a lot of the days to follow, watching history unfold in front of us. 

And now that day is 15 years in the past. 

The TV shows that are being broadcast today commemorating the event make it seem like it only happened yesterday.  Watching the towers get hit again and falling still crushes you like a blow to the gut.  Watching the horror of the day and how the first responders did their utmost to save lives still brings tears to the eyes and a lump in the throat.  It was a tough time.

Perhaps it’s not fitting that I follow up the previous thoughts with what follows, but the sadness of this anniversary is, at least for me, somewhat mitigated by a good thing that happened today. 

I got my bathtub back! 

Let me retrace a few steps and explain.

I live in an old house.  Over a hundred years old actually, and the ownership of an old building like this one always comes with problems.  It seems like there’s almost always something else that needs to be done to make our home more livable. I made a checklist some time ago and started working my way through it as time and money became available.  What did I do you might ask?  How about insulate the walls and attic – check.  Install new windows and doors – yep.  Put in a new furnace and water heater – yep.  Then how about repairing the slate roof and old chimney– check.  And on and on.  So the next item on our list was the water system.  We were still living with the century-old galvanized pipes laid down when the house was built.  Perhaps that was during the McKinley presidency?  Or perhaps William Howard Taft?  Somewhere around that time.  Our local water has a noticeable mineral content, so a lot of those solids ended up as deposits on the inside of our pipes.  Lots of lime and other minerals.  We were at a point where the water flow and pressure at our taps was pitiful and just replacing the fixtures wouldn’t fix the root problem. 

So we asked around and finally found a guy who did some outside plumbing.  He was a fellow employee from where I used to work before I retired and had a great reputation of being a good plumber and having reasonable rates. I invited him down to our place for a look-see and for him to work up a quote on what it would take.  After receiving his more-than-agreeable quote and giving him the go-ahead, he agreed to take on the task of removing all my old piping and replacing it with new CPVC and copper!  It took him a few trips to finish the job due to the inevitable this and that you always run into, but the last trip was today!  He completed the final hook up in my system this morning and that was to connect the new water supply to a new fixture in the old claw-foot tub in our bathroom.  Now it also has a magnificent water flow and super pressure, as do all the other taps in the house.

So another box is checked off on my almost never-ending checklist and another 9/11 anniversary is noted in the world.

So let me conclude today’s blog with this thought. 

Let us never forget 9/11/01 and what happened that dreadful day, but let us also remember that there WERE good things that happened then also – babies were born, people were married, trains arrived on time.  Good meals were cooked and eaten, children went back to school and good deeds were done.  Heroes ran into burning buildings too.

Ordinary people did good things that day, both mighty and mundane.

And fifteen years later a fellow got his pipes fixed on that anniversary and was thankful.