Plumbing in Colorado

I was a plumber for thirty years, in Boston,

Columbia, South Carolina, Portland Oregon, 

and Colorado.  I put plumbing in meditation 

centers in Vermont, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 

and Colorado.  This story is about one project

in Colorado. I was involved with the Buddhist

organization, Vajradhatu, for many years. For

many of those years, the organization would

put on a three month meditation program,

called Vajradhatu Seminary The program 

was held at a variety of ski resorts and hotels 

in the USA and Canada. In 1985, the head of

the organization, Chogyam Trungpa, Tibetan

meditation master, decided he wanted to have 

the program on land the organization owned.

The place where he wanted it to happen, known

at the time as Rocky Mountain Dharma Center,

in Red Feather Lakes , Colorado. At that time,

the facilities of the center consisted of a four 

seater out house, a small shower room, and 

a kitchen with a small stove and one sink.

For the program, we had to build two shower

buildings, a toilet building, and a commercial

kitchen…we had ten weeks. All of Trungpa’s 

advisors begged him to not attempt the project.

He went around them to the director of Rocky

Mountain Dharma Center and told the director, 

Nick, to start the work. I was in the grapevine,

so, I knew the project was happening. I had just

obtained my Master Plumber’s license at that,

so, I called Nick and volunteered to take on the

plumbing. I thought about it for a while one 

afternoon at my house in Boulder. At the 

moment I made the decision to take on the job, 

in front of me, in the sky, I visioned the Buddhas,

bodhisattvas, dakinis and dharma protectors

on clouds, giving me a round of applause.

It was slow going at first. I roped the only other

Buddhist plumber in Boulder, Tom, into taking

on the job with me. He was by far the better 

plumber. I slogged along by myself for a while

until Tom could join me in Red Feather. The day

he arrived, we celebrated madly by driving,

totally drunk, down the Poudre Canyon, me

pissing out the open truck door as we weaved

down the canyon. We worked ten hour days for

ten weeks, only taking three days off. We drank

sake ever night.  No major obstacles happened,

except for one. The Buddhist contractor who was

doing the carpentry wasn’t keeping up…if I didn’t

light a fire under him, we’d never finish in time. He

was a darling of the community…I certainly wasn’t.

I laid into him at a coordinating meeting one time,

and that did the trick. After that, he never hired

us when Tom and I started our own business later

in Boulder.

We finished the work the night before the inspector

came to sign off on our work….I think we finished

about  two in the morning. Tom and I had theme

music for the project…Ry Cooter’s “Chicken Skin 

Music”  I remember sitting in my truck the afternoon

after we had passed, drunk,  listening to “The
Bourgeois  Blues”  and crying. The next day four
hundred and fifty people arrived for the program.