Plumbing Story

I was a plumbing apprentice in Boston, circa 1972,
I worked for a company that was going down,
because the smart partner died. They were reduced
to selling pornography and stolen goods from the shop.
One morning, one of the plumbers came into work
soaking wet. He had driven his car into the Charles
river early that morning. I was assigned to work
with him that day. We went to the building he
had been installing a new heating system in. He went
into a room and said: “I’m going to sleep…make sure
no one bothers me.” I waited there for however long.
When he came out, he got a call for a stopped up toilet
in the building. We went to the apartment, and he
started working on the toilet. The plunger and toilet auger
didn’t work. He pulled the toilet, and snaked it
from the outlet, which yielded no results. In desperation,
he got a hose and stuck it in the toilet. The bathroom was
tiled halfway up the wall, with a floor drain, so he wasn’t
worried about water. He wrestled with that toilet and hose
for a good twenty minutes. Suddenly, a gigantic turd slithered
out like a snake. We looked at each other in a primordial
state of mind, because seeing the turd we were so shocked
that anyone could have produced it. It was a true moment
of awakening.