Wow, Skipjack, that WAS a monumental screw up... Really... And I weren't gonna tell my "honey-dipping" story but seein' as you done drilled thru a water pipe, awwwww, what the Hell???
It was back 'round '72 an' I was workin' for a mainetance company that maintined 'bout half a doze high rise apartment buildin's 'round Arlington Co., Va. and it was winter and real cold... Like, ohhhh, in ther low teens and the wind was blowin' so it felt minus 60 degrees and I get a call from the Jack the Boss...
"We got the sewer backed up to the 7th floor down at Dolly Madison Towers. Get the elctric snake equipement an' get right to it!!!, he said...
So I wok up my housemate, Butch, who also worked for the company and said, "Hey, we gotta get down to Dolly Madison... The drain is stopped up..."
So, we jump in my ol' Volkswagen bus, which just barely started in the cold and froze our way to the maintenance shop to pick up "The Honey Dipper"... Now, fir those of you who don't know about "honey dippin'" there usually ain't much to it... Ya' take these long snakey things and run 'um thru a big old heavy electric machine which feeds the snakes down the drain and eventually comes to the blockage and pushes it into the main sewer line which is big nuff to handle lots of stuff that shouldn't have been put in the drain in the first place... We won't go into them items as Iz had 'nuff problems wid some of the womenz here lately an' don't need no more...
Now that I have tolt you all the basics of honey-dippin' lets get into the heavy duty details of "The HOney-Dipper" and what exactly what we were going to try to accomplish that day... The machine itself is on wheels, kinda like a ewo-wheeled wheelbarrow and weighs, ohhhh, a couple hundred pounds and comes with rolls of snakey stuff that are 'round 50 feet long that you feed into "The Honey-Dipper" and they each weigh in at 'round 75 pounds each...
Now Dolly Madison Towers was (and still is for the poor bastards who have to maintain it) 17 stories tall... Hmmmmm, at 'bout 10 fett per story that accordin' to the Wes Ginny Slide Rule make Dolly Madison Towers, ahhhhhh, 'bout 170 feet tall and guess where ya gotta honey-dip from????...
Give up???
Well, the gol danged roof, gol dang it, that's where!!! Did I mention that it was minus 200 degrees up there on the roof that day???
So Butch an' me put all thet heavy duty honey-dippin' stuff on the elevator and took it to the top floor and then muscled it up the steps to the roof an' got everything in position to get the job done and get the heck outta the cold... Right???
So we feed the first snakey thing thru The Honey-Dipper and then couple the second one and feed it, and the third one and now, my friends the end is indded in sight... Accordin' to the Wes Ginny Slide Rule the last snakey thing oughta have everyone flushin' 's groovin' and us,,,off the roof, warm and happy... Right???
so we couple the last snakey thing to the end of the 3rd one an' hit the go button on The Honey-Dipper start feedin' it thru the machine.... Yes, well be outtta thenArtic soon... But as fate would have it, as the last snakey thing came out the other end.... BANG!!!!.... the couplin' broke and 150 feet of snakey thing was, ahhhh, danged if we knew??? But we did know that it was down in that pipe somewhere 'er, heck, maybe as far as the Arlington County Sewage Treatment Plant???
So I looked at Butch and Butch looked at me an' seein' as I was the one who had answered the phone call from Jack the Boss that morning that made me the supervisor, 'er somethin' so I did what any good supervisor would do and that is look Butch in the eyes, with the bone chillin' wind half blowin' us off the roof an' said, "Sheeeeiiiittttt, Budddy" which purdy much summed up wat I must have ben thinkin' at the time...
Now there are times in a young man's life that define that man's character and I distinctly rememberin' that I could have called Jack the Boss and tolt him what had happened, I could have just jumped the 17 stories to my death or I could try to somehow make chicken salad out of the chicken manure pile that Buth and I found ourselves in that day so....
I send Butch down to the VW bus to get my flashlight and then used it to peer down the pipe to see what I could see and what I saw 'bout 30 feet down was the top of the snakey thing...
Hmmmmmmmm?
"How could this be???" I was askin' myself... "Like, that thing should have found the Potomac River by now???"
So me and Butch sit there on the roof with them Artic winds blowin' fierce all 'round us and neither of us is sayin' a word... We both in someserious soul searchin' and thinkin' an' all that stuff... Tehn I come up with an idea... Seems that since we can see the snakey thing it it must be hung up in the basement of the buildin'...
Now fir folks that don't know about basements of highrise buildings they ain't like Uncle Eranie's basement with the ping pong table and the bar... No, the basement od highrise buildin's is more like the innards of ships... But we make our way down and with a liitl thinkin' figure out 'bout where that the head of the sankey thing might be and we find a "clean out" down there in the bowels of this buildin'.... Now, fir my friends who ain't familiar witha clean out it is a T-Y, meaning it is a T and Y shaped with a treaded part with a cap for, ahhhhh, such situations....
Did I mention that we were now in a room where folks have these chicken wired storage areas with pad-locks on 'um to kepp their golf clubs safe during the winter when some days we so cold that many folks would just call in sick rather than have to walk to their cars to drive to work???
So I sent Butch for a pipe wrench and a ladder and then set the poor boy to uncappin' the clean out...
There are days when there are definate advantages to gettin' the call from Jack the Boss and when he uncapped that clean out I knew that this one day was one of them days... 7 stories of backed up sewage came outta that clean out like a cannon ball from a cannon... I mean, there are no words to experess what it's like to be showered in 7 stories of crap!!!
Well, after what seemed like an eternal shower the the sewage slowed to just an occasional drip and it was then that we both saw that the head of the snakey thing was hung right there in the T-Y... So I figured that all it needed was a nudge with a crowbar out toward us an' I wouldn't have to make that call to Jack the Boss so, poor ol' Butch was soakin' wet so I went for the crowbar and I told Butch to chill (haha) while I got up on the ladder and tried to coax the snakey thing out of the T-Y fittin'.....
Hey, did I mention that I was only like, ahhhhh, 26 years old at the time and 26 years old's ain't as smart as, like, 60 year old's... Just thiought that this would be a good time to make that casual observation...
So, I stuck that crowbar in the clean out and got behind that snake and leveraged it little at a time toward me until I had 'bout 90% of it out with just a little bit still hung in the T-Y fittin'and I knew instinctively that what was going to happen next was outta my hands but it might not be too fun...
"Hey, Butch!!! Better back up 'cause this is gonna be one heck of a show!!!" I yelled as I pried the head of the sankey thing that last 1/4 inch and.........
BANG!!!
SWUSH!!!!
HOLY TOLEDO!!!!!
That 250 pound snakey thing, all 150 feet come outta that clean out in about the most frightfull 5 seconds on this man's life... It come out like a demon as it whipped and thrashed and took on a life of its own... When it fianlly quit its thrashin' I look over at Butch and the poor boy has climbed half way up one of them chicken wire lockers....
Whew!!!
Wish this was the end of the story but it weren't... Here we had an inch of sewage in the basement....
So rather than call Jack, I called a couple buddies, who owed me big time, an' 'bout 4 hours later we had the basement lookin' okay at best... Yeah a few golf bags stll soaked at the bottom but, hey, it's was long time before golf season...
I din't have the heart to ask Butch to go back up on the roof to retreieve "The Honey Dipper" and the empty reels so one of my buddies and I did it, brought it down to the basement and ran a couple lenghts thru the clean out fir good luck, capped it and by now it was beer-thirty... We got all the equipemtn abck into the VW bus 'bout the time the temps got into single digits and headed home... It was dark by then... It was cold... We were both soaked... And for those of you who have ever had an old Volkswagen bus it ain't much warmer in them in the winter than outta 'um...
But I remembered that the half a joint we ahd left in the ash tray that mornin' and fired it up, cranked up a little Poco on the cassette player and that got us home...
Long showers and a few beers later Butch and me and our ladies were sitting 'round jst being happy to have that day in the rear view mirror when the phone rings... It was Jack the Boss...
"How'd things go down at Dolly Madison today??" he asked...