It is generally supposed that when Thomas Paine wrote, in 1776, "These are the times that try men's souls," he was writing about the American Revolution. But I can't help wondering if his true inspiration was the breaking down of an appliance —perhaps a butter churn or windlass, in Paine's day. In our case, it was the hot water heater, which broke a week before Christmas, and our souls, or at least our composure, were definitely tried.
A broken appliance, of course, is not on a par with war, no matter how remote that war might seem. Nevertheless, the demise of a major appliance can test the mettle of your relationship, especially in a house such as ours in which nothing is standard, nothing is done according to city building codes, and everything makes repair people say, "Huh. I've never seen anything like that before." Replacing a water heater should be a relatively straightforward thing, but as day followed day with only cold water, for some reason, parts of the Gilligan's Island theme song kept coming to mind.
The Monday night that it broke, we went to Sears and ordered us up a new one. The installers showed up the next day, as promised. But to bring the water heater up to current safety codes ( now we only have to worry about the asbestos—coated gas pipes, the furnace, the lead pipes carrying our water in ... ) , the heater would need to be elevated slightly off the floor and because our basement was built by the seven dwarves after Snow White took up with that prince, there wasn't enough room for that model of heater to fit. They took the heater away, and Kathy called and ordered the model they said would fit, which would be delivered the following day, Wednesday.
Wednesday came, and yes, they showed up to install the water heater, which, surprisingly enough, actually fit. However, as they were installing it, they inadvertently loosened up the carefully constructed system of rust that was sealing off a nearby leaky pipe: water poured from the pipe. And wouldn't you know it, the shut—off valve for that pipe also happened to block water to the water heater. So even though we had a shiny new Sears water heater, we couldn't use it. We called the plumber.
He said he'd come by that afternoon, and then an hour after he said he'd be there, called again to say he couldn't make it, that he'd be by early the next afternoon. When he called the next evening—which, if you're keeping count, was Thursday—he said he'd had an emergency and wouldn't be over for another couple of hours. Finally, around 9 or 9:30 on Thursday, we had hot water.
A hidden camera during that near—week—long adventure might have seemed to record a documentary on manic depressives because, let me tell you, we went through an extensive array of emotions—resignation, anger, acceptance, blaming, amusement, despair, anxiety—sometimes within the span of a few minutes. We tend to work like yin and yang then: when Kathy would be racked with despair and spewing accusations, I was the voice of reason, and when I wept with longing for the plumber's arrival, Kathy would lift my spirits with a light—hearted observation about throbbing sinuses after washing her face in ice water.
Speaking of which, if you are someone with a vivid imagination, you are probably getting multisensory visions right now of what it might have been like at our house after almost a week without hot water for things like dishes and bathing. While there is always the temptation to revert to the habits of life in the wild under such circumstances, that just didn't seem fair to my co—workers. So what did we do? Let's just say I wish I'd kept count of how many saucepans of water we heated up. For awhile, we tried to convince ourselves that we were like Patience and Sarah, only with a gas stove and a microwave. But the romance of the situation wore off pretty quickly when we discovered that the bathtub drain wouldn't close properly and nothing we tried would keep the water from running out; we got very good at bathing quickly in a rapidly diminishing two inches of water.
Of course, then there was the expense of the whole thing to consider. But who wants to go out to dinner or a movie anyway when you can gather round the ol' water heater and sing worshipful hymns to the spirit of A. O. Smith, king of the water heaters? Good thing the dog is so amusing and that Kathy and I really like each other.
yzipter@journals.uchicago.edu .
