plumber #1 to the rescue!

Continuing on from the tale of woe in my last post, where we were left with a cliff-hanger ending......

Turns out Plumber #2's snake wasn't large enough - er - let me rephrase that and explain.

My flooding problem was a simple case of a clogged line somewhere between my house and the alley and since I live downhill from my neighbor, water flowing from there had no where to go but to seep up around my toilet and flood my floor.

Plumber #2 insisted the problem was that Plumber #1 had not installed the toilet properly back when the house was remodeled - sometime in the last century. But it seems that story was just to throw suspicion off the fact that his equipment was too small - er - let me rephrase that again. His roto-rooter machine simply wasn't powerful enough to completely clear the clog. Rather than admit his short comings - well - you know how it is, don't you ladies.

So Plumber #1, I'm pleased to say, has a new assistant - a nice kid from a good family that has been in the neighborhood for, oh, 30 years or so. (I'm of the opinion that Plumber #1 probably could get more work done if only he's spare his callers all the details).

If Plumber #2 had not called into question the workmanship of Plumber #1, then Plumber #1 might never have responded to me at all, but I believe his pride was at stake. He patiently explained to me that "All them toilets in them old houses down there in that part of town was done that a-way and they work just fine and it's just them pipes down there are old and cracked what with all them roots from all them big trees down there and this kinda stuff's just gonna happen from time to time and it's got nuthin at all to do with the way them toilets was set". (Well, that's the short version).

Plumber #2, he said, was incorrect in his assessment of the situation (not in so many words exactly) - more like "He just don't know how things was done down there in that part of town back then cuz he only just come up here from Maysville a couple-a years ago, ya know, after him and his misses got divorced, and he don't know nuthin 'bout them old pipes down there".

So, to prove the point, Plumber #1 sent his new assistant - a very nice kid indeed, who called me "ma'am" at the end of every sentence. He had Very Large, turbo-charged, industrial-size roto-rooter equipment - twice the size of Plumber #2's dinky little slinky - and with that, the clog was cleared, the flood has ended and my neighbor and I are both singing in the shower again (not together, but we can hear each other sometimes).

There are two morals to this story:
1. It's better to live at the top of the hill than at the bottom.
2. Never believe the stories told to you by a man whose equipment has failed to get the job done.