Feb 25, 2005 4 min read

I was operating on half a night’s sleep. That isn’t what I had planned, but the forces that conspire in the basement had plans of their own. You know those stealth cellar forces. The ones that mysteriously gather during the middle of the night. They must hold conversations, something along the lines of whining about the upstairs inhabitants paying little attention. Have they no respect for the systems that keep the household functioning? Apparently, not. The upstairs people descend the basement steps only when intent upon a task and march hurriedly back to the safety of the first floor. Periodically, the basement forces must decide the upstairs people need to pay attention. They need a wakeup call.

Mine came around 4 a.m. Monday. It sounded like a boom of thunder, followed by a downpour. I attempted to rollover, but then realized the noise wasn’t safely outside the window but menacing beneath my warm, carpeted floor.

I ventured a peek into the basement. Through the rain shower, I determined that pipes were twisted and broken. A big cylinder that I never saw before, honest, had crashed into the hot water boiler, which at that very moment clicked on to heat the house. I ran upstairs, turned the thermostat down and then ventured another peek. For some miraculous reason, that I will not question, the water trickled to a drip.

At daybreak, I called the heating repair people. They’d be there as soon as they could. In the meantime, I mopped up the water as best I could, threw some soaked scatter rugs in the washer, then took a shower and got ready for work.

When I returned to the basement to throw the rugs in the dryer, I noticed the floor drain cover had blown off, and once again, water was all over the basement. A backed up drain. A call to a plumber.

The heating repair people arrived. And at $60 an hour, they stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed some more.

All the while I felt the urge to go and go and go. But I needed to wait and wait and wait.

That’s when I plopped down on the steps, fighting the urge to cry.

The 6-year-old, who was going blissfully about her business, praising all those nice presidents for giving her a day off school, happened to notice me and commented, “You look really sad.”

Well, of course I’m sad. Everything is broken.

“What are you talking about? Everything isn’t broken. Only the heat and the water. The TV works. The microwave works. The refrigerator works. Everything else works. Only two things are broken.”

She was right, except for failing to anticipate the checkbook would soon be broken, too.

Finally, nearly $400 later, the furnace guys were done; the heat was back on and there was more water to clean up. Can’t work on a hot water system without draining it, and where is that water to go with slow drains.

By the way, lady don’t you know you need to empty that tank once a year. You must have had 200 pounds of water in it, and those straps holding it up must be as old as the house.

Can’t say I was disappointed in seeing the backs of them. Nice guys really, but, at their rates, I can’t afford to chit-chat long.

So I cleaned up their water in time for the plumber to arrive. First thing he wanted to do was flood it all over again. Run water, lots of water. And then for $235 he could send a snake or an eel or maybe it was an alligator through the pipes. Good news, he reported, you have nice-looking pipes.

The problem, it turns out, was a baseball bat. That’s right a baseball bat, not that anyone has any idea how that possibly could happen. In fact the 6-year-old swears she hasn’t even seen that bat since at least kindergarten, honest. The 13-year-old acted as though she didn’t even know such things as baseball bats actually exist.

Yeah. Yeah. Just grab a broom and start sweeping up the water.

The moral of this story: empty your tank, count your bats, and every once in a while it wouldn’t hurt to yell down the cellar steps, good job fellows in keeping everything running so smoothly.

E-mail: ltraud@heraldstandard.com