Ye Olde Memories....

The boys (read that hubby and son) are downstairs snaking the toilet drain.

This is an accident waiting to happen.

An EXPENSIVE accident.

Because should anything break, and a plumber need to be consulted, well, let's just say that this old house is made of sticks and clay...get my meaning? Nothing is to code anymore. Replacing ANY lines for the sewer would mean chopping up 10 yards of concrete, both under the house AND under the deck (which was JUST redone a few summers ago--and why didn't we snake the drain THEN????) to replace the line, pull up the pine tree stump from the 30 foot tall pine tree that USED to be there, and MAYBE even replace the sewer tank and re-run the drain field which has already been broken once from somebody rolling a pickup truck over it (we won't mention names....).

I recall a time when I was doing laundry, and suds came out of the toilet in the bathroom down there in our basement! We had to use a hose to run the grey water! Imagine that in this freezing cold! The ultimate in frozen pipe! And of course, you can't shut the door when there's a HOSE in the doorway, so let's just say laundry was a summertime thing....

And I remember a time when we had 2" of water, backed up from the toilet (but not sewer water, thank goodness--just grey water from the laundry) that soaked the downstairs carpet (remember that ugly yellow shag carpeting? OH YES! Original Equipment for a 1976 house, along with the orange kitchen countertops!), and then we couldn't get the musty smell out of the basement so we had to take up all the carpet. That was fun, too. Moldy carpet. Dusty, moldy carpet, taken up in pieces (naturally it wouldn't come up in ONE piece) and transported by hand and shoulder, right next to the nose, and tossed into the pickup truck to take to the landfill--tossed, and dust rose in the air 10 feet!) I believe I contracted a cold that year that I could NOT shake, that ended up staying with me for 6 entire months until the doctor finally diagnosed me with a case of minor asthma.) Sorta makes you understand why we didn't REPLACE the carpet. I think that was a wise decision. Yes, Indeed! I do!

However, now, son lives in the basement, and with my urging, and loving reminders and a skipping down memory lane, son and I convinced hubby to get a toilet snake to snake the line.

Which brings us to this moment, where the "boys" are playing with the monster, rented from the local "machine rent-all" place--with marginal instructions in use of the contraption--and they are snaking the toilet drain.

I'm keeping the number for the plumber handy, just in case. Hey, Culligan Man!