Writing about the sump pump fiasco reminded me about another similiar moment long ago. I was living in a mobile home in rural Oklahoma and teaching at a nearby school.

Those Oklahoma winters are cold as hell, and we regularly had plumbing problems. I would wrap the pipes with heat tape and even used bales of hay to try and block out the wind. Even so, the pipes would sometimes freeze and it would be me and a hair dryer laying under the home unthawing pipes.

One particularly bad winter the temperatures dipped below zero. My sewage line backed up and froze solid. Yes, this big pipe was full of frozen...err...waste. My brother-in-law came to visit and the two of us bundled up and crawled under the house. We came up with the brilliant idea of cutting the line so it could drain, patching the pipe, and then running warm water through to clean things out.

We were very cramped...especially wearing big coveralls and barely had room to move. With teeth chattering, I cut through the 3" sewer line..nothing happened. So I pulled the pipe downward and a huge chunk of frozen icy waste with suspended..particulates slid out of the pipe and landed on my brother-in-law. He was pinned and unable to move for awhile and was cussing a blue streak. I laughed till I cried!

Then of course there was my quarterly trip to the roof to paint liquid aluminum on the seams to keep the rain out. But hey..I had a garden tub!

At least my lil mobile home didn't look like many of these.



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