no pot to piss in

This is Randy. He's my go-to guy when I'm in desperate straits. As I was when I could hear that the kitchen sink, the bathtub and the toilet were all gurgling when water went down any drain—they are all connected. Randy always reminds me that he's a Hatfield, so I don't want to get on his bad side. He came over and we experimented. We finally ascertained that the septic tank was full. Why, I don't know, unless the field was damaged in the flood. This was Friday.

So I called in Bobby of King John to come on over with the honey wagon and pump out the septic tank. He couldn't come until Tuesday. No showers, no dishes, not much flushing for four days. But the pumpout didn't help.

So then I called in Bill, a contractor who has been doing a lot of work in Thomasville since the flood. He had the temerity to buy a piece of Bill Dugan's land Right Next to the River, even after seeing up close and personal what the river did to us. He wants to write a book seeing himself through the eyes of his dogs. He also wanted to know if I was a liberal. "Of course, I said. I'm from New York!" "DeBlasio," he spat. I said, "Us New Yorkers don't like DeBlasio mush more than Trump. Familiarity breeds contempt." And we left it there, because I knew from Dugan that he was a Trumpster. He diagnosed my problem as being in the pipe leading to the septic tank.

Bill brought in one of his guys, Jeffrey, to try to blow out the line with a blast of water. Jeffrey asked me if I knew who owned the trailer across the street. I told him it was Bear (not that he's set foot in it, as far as I can tell), and then Jeffrey blurrted out his life story. He's 55 and has been living in his car for the last three weeks. He broke up with his wife of 30 some years (he was her second husband when she married him at 18). He paid big money to put her through rehab a decade ago. She's been clean since, but lately she's been catting around and sending money to Nigeria, which he suspects is a scam. Anyway, the water could not blast out the blockage. The next step was a rotor rooter. Or digging up the line.

Michael, another of Bill's guys, was fortuitously coming out to Thomasville and could rent a rotor rooter. He and Jeffrey rooted around and—came up with roots! Surprise! A nearby tree had grown into the line. It seems like they had found the root of the problem. And my problems were gone like water down the drain. For now!

I have detected a certain amount of boredom with my homeowner's problems on the part of my dear readers. I can't imagine why. Let's just leave it that I'll be back to entertainments and scenery soon, but not quite yet.