A few years back, the ancient sprinkler system in my front yard started leaking all over the place and the water pressure inside the house suddenly all but disappeared. Showers couldn’t be taken, dishes, clothes and the dog couldn’t be washed, and worst of all, the toilet couldn’t be completely flushed.
“I think we have a little problem,” I finally informed my wife after I had thoroughly inspected the sprinkler system’s command center where all kinds of rusty old pipes and different colored wires came together in a flooded flower bed near the front of my house.
“I already know we have a problem, Daryl,” said my wife, slightly agitated by the fact that I hadn’t dealt with the matter sooner. “Don’t you think we should finally call someone to come on out and fix it?”
“But plumbers cost a fortune,” I quickly reminded her.
“Well, something has to be done, and please don’t tell me that you’re going to try to fix it yourself,” pleaded my wife, having already witnessed my lack of handyman skills on numerous occasions throughout the years.
“I know what,” I said, “I’ll call Eddie! He’ll know what to do and he won’t charge us an arm and a leg to do it, either!”
Eddie is a longtime friend of mine who I met in Army basic training many years ago who now lives in Vacaville, about 30 minutes away from me, but often drives up when I am in need of a handyman.
“Daryl,” pleaded my wife, “please just call a plumber. I know Eddie means well, but something always seems to go wrong when he fixes things, especially when the two of you are working on it together.”
Well, to make a long story short, I got Eddie to drive up the next morning and get started on the repairs, only to be called a few hours later at work by my youngest son who said, “Dad, it looks like Eddie hit a main pipe or something with his pickaxe and we’ve got “Old Faithful” going off in our front yard.”
“What?” I yelled into the phone.
“But the good news,” said my son, “is that the City of West Sacramento Public Works Department is already here and working hard on the problem. In fact, they already have a hole dug that has to be five or six feet deep and almost that wide. You want to talk to Eddie?”
“No,” I said, “I guess it’s too late for that.”
“Something tells me this is Eddie’s last handyman job for us, huh, Dad?” said my laughing son, which finally brings me to my little story.
A few weeks ago, when Eddie had been up for a little visit, I happened to mention to him that one of these days – maybe sometime this spring – I was going to need to take down the large wooden trellis that stretches all the way across the front of my house because all four of the posts that have been supporting it for the past 25 years were rotting away at their bases.
“Well,” said Eddie, “just let me know when you decide to do it, and I’ll get my electric saw and my sledgehammer up here and we’ll make mincemeat of that puppy in no time! You know me, I love to tear things down!”
“Well,” I said, “the real problem is that my wife loves that trellis and thinks the house would look stupid without it, so I’ve still got some talking and convincing to do before I can take the darn thing down.”
“But it’s just about ready to fall down by itself,” Eddie informed me.
“I know,” I said, “but it should probably last until spring if we don’t get too many bad storms and by then, I’m sure I’ll have my wife on-board for taking it down.”
Anyway, although that is the way I remember the conversation, Eddie apparently heard it differently, and before I knew it, I was once again getting a phone call at work from my youngest son.
“Dad,” said my son, “do you know that your friend Eddie is over here tearing down our house?”
“What?” I asked.
“And he’s started in the front yard with that old trellis that mom loves.”
“Oh, no,” I cried out.
“Do you want to talk to him?”
“How far along is he?”
“Well,” said my son, “the house still seems to be standing, but mom’s trellis is toast!”
“I’m on my way home! And whatever you do, don’t call your mother at work and tell her about any of this!”
By the time I swung my truck into the driveway, Eddie had already sawed my wife’s beloved trellis into hundreds of smaller segments to make it easier for me to take them to the dump.
“The hardest part,” said Eddie, obviously proud of his work, “was breaking up all the concrete footings. Whoever built that thing sure built it to last, and each one of those footings was a good three feet deep – and he used industrial concrete, too.”
“But Eddie,” I said, “don’t you remember me telling you that I had to get my wife’s permission first?”
“Get your wife’s permission?” asked Eddie in disbelief, the concept obviously foreign to him. “I never tell my wife anything. And that’s one of the reasons we’ve been happily married for almost 40 years! So, if I was you, I wouldn’t even mention it to her. Plus, my wife never cares what I do to the outside of the house, and I bet your wife won’t even know that ugly old trellis is gone if you don’t bring it up.”
And so, I didn’t, and everything was going just fine until my wife happened to look out the kitchen window while she was preparing dinner later that evening and screamed so loud that my son and I could hear it all the way into the living room.
“Don’t go in there, Dad,” my son warned me with a smile. “The last time I looked, she had a knife in her hand.”