This story goes back several years. It all started when an old gal I know needed some help. She desperately needed some help. She lives in a very decrepit old house. I got word that the City (an unnamed city) was going to condemn her home that had been in her family for many decades. There was junk piled up higher than an Elephant’s Eye. (I finally found a way to incorporate that line in a story. It was included in a nasty letter I received from a homeowner years ago that we had installed a wastewater line adjacent to his house and he was upset that we weren’t keeping that right of way mowed to his liking)

I along with a crew of my guys went and cleared out around the house and hauled everything away. Everything that wasn’t total junk, like flower pots (dozens of them) and the like got brought over to my place, with the understanding once we got the city off our back, she could come select what she wanted to go back for future use.

Next on the list from the code enforcement people in the town where this old house is located was all the broken window panes. I bought plexiglass and drilled and screwed them to the old window frames, solving that situation.

Then there was the front porch that had rotted and pretty well fallen off the house. There was no repairing that, so I tore it completely off and built a new porch. Not a small task.

There was an old garden shed in the back that got propped up and plumbed up and a new floor put in it. I wasn’t sure if I’d get out of there without a snake or spider bite, but all worked out fine.

After a couple of weeks work, the city was happy and I left thinking I’d done my good deed of the year. Or maybe a decade.

I performed all this work because I was able to and was not looking for any high praise. I did think at some point maybe a thank you would have been in order.

Almost immediately I started hearing complaints that I had taken this and that of hers. I never did convince her to come select what all she wanted brought back and place in a nice orderly fashion. I finally selected a bunch of pots and planters that weren’t broken and brought them so she would shut up.

This all happened about 7 or 8 years ago. Now I’ve had several people tell me this lady told them that came over destroyed her sewer pipe going from the house to the city main by driving over it when collecting up all the junk.

She maintains that the pipe was an old clay tile that was laid just under the ground. I know for a fact that it’s not possible for that be her sewer service because her house is downhill from where the clay tiles are located. Spending 50 years in the business of installing wastewater lines I can tell you that shit don’t run uphill.

There is no possible way that I am going back over there to take on another project. So the line would have been four to six feet deep in the area where we back a trailer in.

I don’t know for sure what her plumbing problem is but I have a feeling that it is an old collapsed line beneath that house. She is filling her bathtub with water and dipping it out with buckets to flush her commode.

I now wish that I had not gotten involved all those years ago. The house really should have been condemned and demolished and she could have found an alternative place to live.

She has neighbors that wish that disaster was torn down and turned into a nice lot for a new house.

It just ain’t going to be my problem, and it hurts my heart to take this position.