November Spring

The plumber put in a new water heater yesterday. It took almost forever.

I know it sounds impossible, but the rusty gas-fired unit that stood next to the sink in our kitchen [left] may have been 30 years old. Every fitting was corroded, caked with mineral deposits, and fearsome to behold. Some things broke. The hardest chore was emptying the tank so he could move it. He tried everything from pressure to pumping and back again. Finally he removed the drain fitting and found that the bottom of the tank was filled with “rocks.” When he punched through with a screwdriver, a torrent of gorp came spitting out. The symbolism was as heavy as the mess.

After he’d hauled the thing out of the way, I had to clean up the now-exposed corner. Matted ribbons of cobwebs hung everywhere. I could see concrete blocks that had never been painted (too hard to reach behind the heater). Where another plumber had punched a hole through the old adobe wall to run the pipes many years ago, a large pile of adobe dirt was left. Mixed with the water already spilled, it had turned into a pile of soupy mud. It’s always about mud here, isn’t it?

We went outside and unboxed the new water heater in the sun. It was gleaming white and beautiful.

“¡Que bonita!” I exclaimed.

“Que linda,” he said, correcting my diction. “Cosa nueva muy linda.”

“Cosa nueva muy linda,” I repeated. “¡Sí!”

Eventually he new water heater was in place, if not yet hooked up. There was much cutting and glueing, replacing of valves, wrapping with plumber’s tape, and then taking it all apart again. There were leaks when we turned the water on, so these processes repeated. A gas man came over to fire it up. The two of them were old friends. The new water heater was taller than the old one, and the chimney pipe coming down from the ceiling was too long. The gas man had fancy cutting tools in his truck and cut the double-walled pile down to fit, drilled holes, and screwed everything together tight, better than I ever would have done. The two gentlemen then spent considerable time instructing me in Spanglish on everything about the installation that was now illegal. Old Taos, all the way.

It had been quite a day. I’d been standing by the whole time and more than once was needed. I hadn’t actually done much, but my back was aching, probably as a result of tensing up over barely-missed disasters. This is such an outlaw arrangement (most old adobes are) that anything could happen. My problem was, I knew too much. In the end, though, it worked, thank God!

It took me about an hour to clean up afterwards and put the kitchen back together, and then I took my first hot bath in four and a half days. I remembered that I’d told the plumber that washing in the sink with water heated on the stove was getting old, although I knew a lot people our age grew up that way.

“I did,” he said. Which led to:

“One of my first jobs, I was a sheepherder in Colorado. They asked me, what did I need, I said a horse, a dog, and a gun. I went up there with 2,000 sheep. The dog did all the work. A horse, a dog, and a gun. I went there with 2,000 sheep and came back with 4,000. They gave me a $50 bonus.”

It’s good to be young, isn’t it? (The universe will provide.)

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2. I am So Lucky
3. High Desert Spring
4. Best Plumber Ever
5. New Fotofeed Series: First Week of Spring