What it takes to live like a king

Some days start out better than others.

Now all the sleepy-time experts tell me I ought to have a cool bedroom when I lay me down to sleep. Consequently, I’ve given my handy-dandy, digi-wizard thermostat clear instructions to turn down the heat just before bedtime and bring the house back up to toasty warm just in time for breakfast. It’s a great system, except the floor is a bit cold underfoot for that inevitable wee-hour wee-wee run – great, at least, until I awoke and it wasn’t.

Under the quilts and comforters my toes were still toasty, but my nose was cold as a healthy pup’s. Annoyed, I concluded the furnace had apparently slept through its morning wake-up call, leaving the house chilly enough to store a side of beef. Fiddling with the switches failed to resolve the problem, nor did the most creative of epithets have any salubrious effect. It was time to go to the cellar to confront the problem at its source.

I doubt if the folks who laid the foundation for this house more than a century ago were in anyway trained in hydrology, but they did understand that a cellar sunk in sand a few hundred yards from the Mississippi best be pretty doggone shallow lest the water table regularly rise to meet it. Thus, the space beneath my home is cramped, dark, but dry – space for the furnace, water heater, an odd assortment of seasonal gadgets and a collection of stuff waiting for someone to get up the gumption to haul it out and throw it away. It’s not an area of the house visited often.

When I stepped off the stair and flipped on the light, an excess of water joined a lack of fire in my litany of morning woes. There was no blaming Mother Nature for the puddled floor, it was the slow, steady ooze from a spot on the water heater never intended to ooze water. So I stood there, warm water to the right of me, cold heater to the left – an off kilter incarnation of caught between hell and high water…

It was one more affliction of our modern age. Not that many lifetimes ago, such a problem didn’t exist. Central heat, hot and cold running water were beyond the experience of anyone save the king of France or some similar elevated personages. Us common folk, confronted with cold house and cold water, would have simply gathered up some wood, lit a fire and heated house and kettle with nary a second thought.

I, instead stood there, nose cold, toes damp, sadly in need of help.

I’m pleased to say, there’s a happy ending to this story. I ate my lunch in a warm kitchen, then washed my plate in steamy water piped up from my brand new water heater.

All it took was a couple of phone calls and a valid credit card.

Oh, and a couple guys who knew what they were doing – let’s not forget the most important part…

Once again, I was reminded how much we all depend on the folks who put the fire back in a cold furnace and know how to keep water on the inside of our pipes. How much we all need the people who roll up their sleeve and actually do things…who make things, fix things. People who move this and that from here to there and then make it do whatever it’s supposed to do once they get it there.

Y’know, we read about billionaires going on joyrides to outer space. Hear of oligarchs sailing around in yachts the size of battleships and big-money politicos yakking up a storm, telling you and I about all the big deal things they are gonna get done.

But not one of ‘em is worth two hoots in hell when the furnace is on the blink and the water heater springs a leak. Who we depend on is that guy with a truck, some tools and a lot of know-how.

It’s easy to forget that when things are going good.

Sometimes, it takes a cold house and a leaky pipe to get a guy back to thinking straight.