In a couple of days, my wife and I will be returning to a house with no natural gas service. It’ll be sponge baths and “cooking” over a single-burner camp stove for who knows how long, and none of this is my fault. I know, I’m not supposed to focus on things to complain about, but the topic rates a rant.
According to our house-sitter, sometime Monday night a blithering idiot made a three-point turn in the dirt road at the end of our driveway and smashed into the gas meters, somehow escaping well-deserved immolation, and sped off into the night without telling a soul about the crime. The house-sitter came out at around 1:00 a.m. to lock her truck and heard a loud hissing noise but didn’t realize what had happened until she drove off the next morning. The gas company was already on the way, it turned out, and she returned from work that afternoon to find the gas completely turned off and that the gas company had removed the meters.
Adding to the mess, it seems that the impact of the collision damaged the underground pipes as well. The red “DANGER!” tag left on the door wasn’t much help, but the emergency dispatcher at New Mexico Gas informed me that a licensed gas plumber would have to repair the pipe(s), after which there would be an inspection, and then we’d have our gas again.
If only it were that simple!
First of all, our landlady lives in Pennsylvania, and the next-door neighbors, whose house was also afffected, were off to visit a guru in Seattle, after which they’d be attending a sun dance on an Indian reservation in South Dakota. This meant I had to line up a gas plumber via long-distance from our motel in Albuquerque, inform the landlady and the neighbors, and then deal with all manner of reactions. It took a while to make this happen, but I got it done, and as of today I can say that the damaged pipe(s) have probably been repaired, but we can’t be sure of this until the gas is turned back on and the plumber can finish checking for leaks. Or something like that.
Be that as it may, the tale is far from over. The water heater in our rented adobe has a non-standard overflow pipe coming from the pressure relief valve, which the inspector may either “grandfather” and allow or declare unacceptable, which would entail even more work before service is restored. The inspection won’t take place until Monday at the earliest, and after that we’ll have to wait for the gas company to re-install the meters—assuming, etc., etc., etc. But that’s not the biggest nugget. Are you ready for this?
We’ve been living for almost five months with a GAS LEAK in the adjacent dead landlord’s studio apartment!
He died in 2006. His heirs, which in this instance means our landlady, never turned off the pilot light on his tiny kitchen stove. Since that time, the apartment—on the other side of the wall from our bedroom—was left locked up, with the dead landlord’s dead plants still sitting in the window and his jacket hanging on the clothes tree. Last February there was a regional natural gas cutoff that lasted for over a week, during which time it got down to 26 °F below zero. The pilot light on the stove in question obviously went out. There was quite the outlaw situation by then, as the gas company was taking forever to relight everyone, and hundreds of freezing Taoseños simply turned their own gas back on. Without incident, by the way.
A friend of ours volunteered to do just that and did. Believe me, we were grateful. But in the process, no one thought about the gas stove in the studio apartment. Who would have guessed that the pilot light was still left on—the stove’s gas line never having been closed—after five whole years? (The dead landlord’s place was on the same meter as our own, so that means we’ve paid for wasted gas for all that time…) Since there was no one to relight the pilot, it simply sat there and leaked until the idiot rammed the meters. Thank God the apartment wasn’t airtight!
At least we’re lucky that the plumber found this out today and closed the valve, and by some miracle the place never exploded. If we haven’t used up all our miracles, the inspector will grandfather the water heater and allow the gas company to replace the meters before I go crazy from not being able to take a real bath or use the kitchen stove. Meanwhile, the neighbors are off visiting on the rez, and all of this gets fixed—or not—without their even having to be here. Er, there.
Oh, and of course, I have to go to Arizona and empty out two mobile homes to sell before the economy implodes.
And yes, we’re going to move!
Related posts:
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Ah, but what a grand adventure it’s been
Yes, and one I hope to never have again! And I’m talking about the gas, of course. It has been a grand adventure in that location.
>>>And yes, we want to move!
And after all that wooing you did to get me out there. LMAO!
But wow, you re so lucky it all didn’t go KABOOM! on you.
Move from this old adobe, not move away. It was only 82 °F in Taos yesterday. What was it in NYC, hmmm?
I know what you’re going to say to what I’m going to say but I’m going to say it anyway. God was looking out for you, my friend.
No, you don’t know what I’m going to say…
I’m just fine with God looking out for us, and I hope She finds us a better house toot sweet!
I’m not sure I like the idea of your moving. JHF without his adobe hacienda, his wood stove, his dead landlord, his mud road and his unimpeded view of heaven is not truly JHF. Don’t go getting soft on us, my friend. Don’t go split-level or California style, don’t do martinis and small talk in the late afternoon. A suburban Farr is a contradiction in terms and a horrible thing to contemplate.
I don’t have to live with drug-crazed idiots running over the gas meter. It was 10 feet off the road! This place is filthy and depresses my wife. It even depresses me. It was fine as a temporary refuge and bachelor pad—still is, if you don’t let your date see the bathroom—but enough is enough. It’s dead. It’s doomed. Plus, the neighbors are psycho. This scene is over. No mas. We have to get out of here ASAP. My wife doesn’t deserve this. I don’t know why she put up with it as long as she did, or why I did either. Talk about self-deprivation and unnecessary suffering.
Don’t you worry. After we find a nicer place, I can go get a hut somewhere. In fact, that’s what I’d like to do the most: find a wild crazy piece of land and build my own!