Darren!

We had plumbing problems. Or, more specifically, drainage problems. The house we live in is old. Small, too. The plumbing is not new. It’s basic, PVC, exposed underneath the house. Ugly-looking, PVC is! I don’t like the blazing, plastic whiteness of it and the small black writing on its side. It’s about as unattractive as you can get, and it’s a constant reminder of how we’re not helping the Earth by using this indestructible stuff. Everyone uses it, but that’s no excuse.

Anyway, our sinks had been backing up. Water standing. Didn’t leave. That’s what we’d been experiencing for months. We tried snaking with a snake that belonged to Gaywynn’s father—not overly long, but a snake, still. No luck. We had to open one end of the PVC pipe and let the gray water drain onto the front yard, not where it’s supposed to go. Gray water. What a term.

That draining gray water caused pooling near the house. Not desirable. I bought bags of rocks and emptied them onto the pool, smothering it. Still the ground was always spongy and damp and smelly, and, now that it’s summer, a breeding ground for insects. I could see them emerging from the quagmire.

This came to a head. I couldn’t take this way of living anymore. Much less the complete impracticality of a sink that doesn’t drain. Some things are an adventure when you’re in your twenties but are just depressing when you’re 77, my age. Discussing this, we had visions of all the plumbing needing to be replaced. It already looks jerry-rigged, something that might at any moment collapse. Money is short here, and that potential major replacement made us worry to no end.

Despite those money concerns, we’d had enough. We needed a plumber. Gaywynn searched the Internet. Criteria? We wanted someone local. Someone with a small business. We didn’t want a big enterprise that might treat us casually and overcharge us.

Gaywynn found Darren Aucoin’s Plumbing in Scott, LA, near where we live. That’s in the country, about three hours west of New Orleans. Actually, Gaywynn had first seen one of his trucks in town. So, I called Darren. His voice mailbox was full, so I texted him. Everyone texts these days. The junk removal guy, the sewer guy, the lawn care guy, everyone. Later, Darren called me back. I explained the problem, as well as I could.

“I can come by today around 4pm,” he said.

“Great. See you then.”

By 4:30, he hadn’t arrived. I called him. He was stuck on another job due to unexpected circumstances. He was apologetic, sincerely so. You can never fault someone for unexpected circumstances. We arranged for him to come by the next morning between 6:30am and 7. Better. Cooler. The goddam heat is in the high 90’s here. Heat index of 115, or something surreal and miserable.

The next morning, at 7:15am, Darren pulled up to our house with his white truck. I was waiting. He got out, and we shook hands. He’s a slim, slight man, with a face and hands that, I could tell, have seen labor. His work clothes had most likely experienced the underside of quite a few houses. He was all business. I walked him over to the house. He looked underneath, peered at the pipes, looked up at me.

“Needs snaking. That’s all. That’ll solve the problem.”

“Really? That’s all you need to do?”

“Yep.”

That sounded too good to be true. But what if it was.

I asked him how much that would cost. $150, he said. God, what a blessed number. We had visions of $750, maybe more. Money we really didn’t have.

Darren Aucoin, my hero

He got a huge wheel of a snake from his truck and brought it over to the house. He worked efficiently and briskly. No hesitation. As he was working, he asked me, without looking up, “Where’d you find me? In the phone book?”

Do people still own phone books? I know we don’t have one. When was the last time I even saw a phone book?

“We looked on the Internet.” I told him that we’d searched for a local plumber, a small business. And why. He nodded.

He opened the valve at the end of the PVC pipe, and the infamous gray water gushed. He waited until it waned. Then he inserted the snake. More and more and more snake. More. And more. Endless snake. Later, he said it was sixty feet he snaked through the pipe. I didn’t know we had that much pipe that was snake-able. He retracted the snake, gunk accompanying its withdrawal.

“Grease,” Darren noted.

I felt a bit guilty. Who pours grease down their drain? I looked away.

He had me keep the water running in the kitchen while he did all this. At one point, I went back inside to have a look. It was draining! Could the problem have been fixed? It seemed so! A huge sense of relief flowed through me, snaking out all worry. Then Darren went to the other side of the house and replaced some pipes we had rigged to help the draining. They were only temporary, and really hadn’t helped that much.

I thanked him with as much ardor as if he’d saved me from drowning. In a way, he had. I wrote him a check. He wrote me an invoice. While he was doing that, he said,

“You’re up early.”

“That when I do my work. I’m a writer.”

“A writer?” he responded neutrally, as if I’d said I liked ketchup.

“Yes, but in terms of making money, I’d rather be a plumber.”

No response. I suppose he knew it was true. He gave me the invoice. We shook hands.

He turned to leave, then paused.

“Call me if you need anything else,” he said.

He got into his truck, pulled out of the driveway, and then he was gone. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet.

All day I basked in the relief of this problem solved, in the blessed sight of water draining. It’s amazing how something mundane as that can provide you so much satisfaction.

Somewhere in John Steinbeck’s wonderful book, Travels with Charley, his dog, the eponymous Charley, becomes sick. Steinbeck finds a vet, a young man, who takes Charley with him and, later, returns with a now-healthy Charley and some medicine. Steinbeck is greatly relieved.

Steinbeck writes, “There’s absolutely nothing to take the place of a good man.”

Darren, this means you.