High, Dry, and Stinky

R.N. McManus

This adventure started, as many do, with an event I only later imagined as an omen. Not usually a superstitious person, except maybe in hindsight, when I can trace a set of occurrences to what eventually happened. This particular hot, suffocating day in August (is there another kind?) here in the Palmetto State, was a Saturday, the day which is the last of three days of laundry -- the day of the underclothes-- our dryer stopped drying. The clothing was still wet when the cycle finished. Based on experience, I figured the heating element was burned out. This was disconcerting because the dryer was only about two years old.

Fortunately, my wife had the foresight to purchase the extended warranty, so there was only the matter of contacting the repair center. A nice, helpful young lady at the other end of the line scheduled us up for Tuesday morning with a company with which we were not familiar. Thy remain nameless throughout this story for reasons that become clear. Knowing that a repair person would arrive in a couple of days relieved some of the anxiety we felt because our next task was the necessary trip to the laundromat to dry the wet clothing.

We’ve not been anywhere near one of those in many years, but we felt that we had a leg up because my wife had been practically raised in a laundromat that was run by her uncle. Turns out, her experience in this area was twenty years out of date. We found out that surprising changes have occurred in laundromats during those years.

Large upright washers and dryers with electronic controls and flatscreen TVs for entertainment were nice surprises. The same hot, humid atmosphere slapped us in the face as we pushed through the front doors because this was something we had both put out of our minds.

Unsupervised terrorists, otherwise known as children, were racing around with and without wireframe carts for use in the laundromat and getting underfoot. This was an unanticipated and unpleasant new development. No need to muse on how WE BOOMERS certainly weren’t allowed to behave in such a sociopathic manner.

Still, it didn’t take us long to refamiliarize ourselves with the ropes of the modern laundromat. Besides, it was only until the repairman was due to arrive in a couple of days.

“Appointments” for cable guys and repair persons really don’t fit the definition of the word, do they? No set time, but a range of times that consumed one half of our day. Restricted from moving freely about life, I could not resist keeping one eye on the clock while I did anything else, listening for the telephone announcing the imminent arrival of the dryer man.

Just as the last minutes of our “window of opportunity” ticked away, the house phone gave one little ding. Not the staccato burst of noise that we’ve come to expect, just a solitary ding! My wife, Cheryl, snatched up the receiver anyway, only to find silence. The lonely kind of silence that feels like a missed opportunity or seeing the last slice of cake get taken as you move in on it.

To be certain that the repair ticket was still active, Cheryl called the warranty service number; exasperation set in as she learned that the repair service had called in our job as “customer refused service”. What the …? Not only did we not refuse, they never even bothered to call the second number provided just in case of equipment failure! Cheryl kept her cool, remained calm while asking, “Is there another service that is available?”

“Yes, ma’am”, the young lady answered, “We also use Sloane Appliance.”

“Wonderful! I’ve used them before, and I know they are reliable,” Cheryl, her relief plain in her voice, responded.

That nice young lady promised to put in a ticket to Sloane’s, also promising that they would contact us to confirm the “appointment”.

No call that day or the next, but we reasoned that the call could come on the day appointed before their arrival. On the day promised, we received a cryptic text advising us not to take the day off (?!?). We’re retired; every day is a day off. Fearing the worst, Cheryl called the warranty service again, talked with a different, nice, young lady.

“Could you check to see if the work order to fix our dryer is still open?” Cheryl asked.

“ Yes ma’am, it is” she replied.

‘Well, we have received a strange text telling us not to take the day off. What does Sloane mean?”

“No ma’am, it’s not with Sloane, it’s with (name withheld to protect the guilty)”

“Why? This was supposed to be with Sloane Appliance, not these other jackasses!” Cheryl replied with a rising note in her voice. Her control appeared to be slipping.

“I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t know why this wasn’t changed! I will take care of it immediately and Sloane will confirm today.”

Mollified for the moment, Cheryl returned the phone to its charger. Less than one hour later, the correct repair service did call and confirmed that their technician would look at the problem; however, they were booked solid until the following Tuesday, another four days until the first available slot. Although this would make nearly a week without our own dryer, the situation had been addressed, somewhat, and we thought we saw some light at the tunnel's end or was that an approaching train? Choo-choo-ch-boogie, another severe problem barreled down, the cyclopean headlight illuminating a more dreadful set of events.

The following is rated for mature audiences only, younger readers are advised to stop here.

Going back in my narrative to the day the dryer gave up the ghost, that lovely Saturday, I was showering after a workout. Cheryl spoke over the noise of the shower to ask where the water lapping her bare feet on the bathroom floor was coming from. Dismayed, I looked down and saw that the shower was not draining, but had risen up to my ankles overflowing the lip of the shower stall onto the floor! Cutting off the shower, we grabbed several large towels for mopping the floor dry. Now to assess. The toilet had been slow to drain, but this had happened before for unknown reasons. Living downstairs in a basement apartment meant that after filling the drainpipe with the shower, the draining practically stopped not only in the toilet, but every other sink in the house was slow and gurgling!

My wife called the landlord who suggested that the septic tank was probably full and needed a good pumping; he later estimated that he’d been here twenty-five years at least, and it’d never been pumped. So, we were in for a couple of days of semiprimitive living; a virtual cupcake...except the true extent was not revealed as clearly as we thought.

Forward to Monday morning, two days after the “flood”, and after our initiation to the trials and tribulations of the laundromat. The sewage guys show up early with their “honey wagon” to vacuum the septic tank and encountered the first difficulty: where is the septic tank? Nobody is around from the installation days when the house was built sometime in the 1970s, and even the landlord isn’t really sure of where it might be located.

Poking around the likely area with T-handled metal rods, the tank was tentatively located about two feet below the surface with dull thuds on the submerged lid. But then! One of the septic tank guys notices the gas lines coming off of the heat pump with an angle that could take them very near where they would have to dig to expose the top of the septic tank!

Avoiding a gas explosion is popular with everyone involved here, which meant no digging would commence until the local utility reps come out to mark the hidden gas lines, which they did two days later. Now it was clear that the lines traversed the soil over the tank. Again, no digging, no vacuuming, no nothing until the utility came out to physically locate the offending lines! Increasing the depressing sensation of even more semiprimitive living, this coincided with the ramp-up of utilities region-wide as they responded to deal with the approaching hurricane, Dorian; we are told that it would be at least two weeks, if we’re lucky, to get anything done about this new development.

Our next decision was to leave town, go visit family in North Carolina, make sure the cat had enough food and water for a couple of days. Thus started our two-week stay at a couple of Hampton Inns, the one in North Carolina and one about one mile from our place when we returned home.

Hampton Inn is our go-to when traveling, so familiarity played a big part in this decision. Our little pied-a-terre had become uninhabitable for us, the unflushed toilet had received deposits for a couple of days and began to ripen. We tried Clorox, Febreeze, and even bought sewage treatment intended for RV toilets! None of this worked very well at all. The stench was incredible.

Coinciding with our own displacement, there were many people chased away from their homes on the coast and the coastal plains; a state-ordered mandatory evacuation turned the north-south of a major interstate into north-bound traffic that bore down on our region. Dire predictions made it clear that we had only lost convenience, and not our structure and/or belongings. These folks fleeing the destructive storm had possibly lost home, livelihood, maybe even people as the storm battered its way up the east coast. Placed our situation in a perspective we needed. To gamify our own experience, we decided that we were Thurston and Lovey Howell from Gilligan’s Island; people cleaned after us, cooked for us, made our beds, and put out fresh towels every day.

Finally, the storm went on to the north. Our landlord decided to install a new septic tank instead of waiting on the utility guys. The new tank was dug and installed in just a few hours on one of the loveliest Friday mornings ever witnessed. In the meantime, the dryer was repaired, a brand new problem of a thoroughly clogged dryer vent pipe was overcome, and we returned home for good. Oh, happy day! At least until the next volley of outrageous misfortune attacks our little fortress.