A Plumbers Saga Part 2: The Tampon Shower

From Bruce:

First off, I would like to thank the wonderful people who emailed me concerning The Saga part 1. It gladdens my soul to know that there are people out there who truly appreciate a real life story and can identify with my experiences as a Sewer phD. I'll try not to disappoint you all.

Now one of the things that brings joy to a plumbers heart is receiving a call from a bank explaining to us that their system is stopped up and that they need us RIGHT away. This little story concerns one such call and the results that we had.

SCENARIO

Ring! Ring.....B&R Plumbing...
Bank Manager--This is Jim at 1st and Peoples...we have a little problem down here..our toilets are overflowing! Can you come right away?
B&R Plumbing---Sure thing, we'll be right there.
And so it begins..............

We arrive at the bank and proceed to make our inspection to ascertain the problem. The bank manager directs us to the ladies room, and there on the floor is the result of an aborted flush....a puddle of water, and one lonely, petite grogan, swimming languidly about. You truly DO have a problem we expound, noticing the embarresed look on one tellers face,and so, get to work. Now our first guess is that the offending toilet is stopped up, so we proceed to use the mini-eel on it. For those of you who are Plumberese deprived, a mini eel is a tool consisting of a flexible cable about two feet long attached to a handle. You stick the cable down into the toilet and twist the handle, hopefully snagging any obstruction in the toilet trap. In he goes..twist,twist, jiggle jiggle..nothing there..apparently this thunderbowl is o.k. so we proceed to the next step in our endeavors. Going outside, we pull out the next weapon in our arsenal of GroganBusters..the hand held Steel Tape. Now this little article is a steel band approx. 1 inch wide, 50 feet long, with a pointed steel head reminiscent of an oversized arrow head. We inserted the tape into the cleanout fixture close to the bank and run him out to his full length---nothing. But upon withdrawal, we do find the tape to be coated with toilet paper and globs of semi-viscous BrownDollars (Plumberese for the money we receive for playing with other peoples shit).

Now according to KY state plumbing code, any sewer system must have a cleanout tap every 100 ft. so we proceeded downline on to the next one and inserted the Steel Tape again. Now it just so happens that this cleanout is at the top of an embankment at the edge of the parking lot. The sewer system then proceeds to go downhill at a 60 degree angle for about 30 feet. In goes the tape, and stops after about 20 feet. Eureka!, we exclaim---we have found the blockage! We poke around with the tape for 10 or 15 minutes but can't seem to break through so we bring out our next weapon, the Mighty Electric Eel! Now this little jewel consists of 75 feet of coiled steel connected to a 2 horsepower drill motor and tipped with a steel spiral, which will embed itself into a blockage thus enabling the operator to physically pull it out. Vroooom--in she goes--and stops deader than Kurt Cobain. Damn ,we say. Not only is the line still stopped up but it now has a 95.00 eel spring clutched in its rancid bowels. At this point we are getting pretty frustrated, and there is nothing left to do but dig the damn line out, cut into it, and manually clear the obstruction. So, over the hill we go, shovels in hand and start to dig. One hour later, after finding that the goatdamned line is 30 inches underground we decide to call in the backhoe. In he rumbles and proceeds to uncover this 4 inch vein of shit--he does in 20 minutes what it would have taken 2 days for us to do.

OK--now we can work! Ross, my cohort in this business climbs into the ditch and proceeds to saw the line in half close to where we think that it is stopped up. As he cuts through, a brownish trickle begins, and the aroma surrounding us takes on that "smell of money" attribute. All the way through now, and a section of pipe is removed so that we can try to unstop the pipe from this end. Now Ross, being the man of steel that he is (as any good plumber shoud be), proceeds to insert his arm back into the pipe. I can feel it, he says, and pulls out a wad of raw sewage..yum...black gold. Continuing to probe around, he pulls out a shit encrusted pencil ( we save this for our souvenir box), and what appears to be some paper clips--all rusted and coated with Liquishit. Still, there is no flow, but with a mighty effort Ross plunges his arm once again into the gaping maw of this monster of defecation. Yank--jerk---push---pull--one last ditch effort and viola! an eruption so foul that even our jaded senses are overcome for a second---a boiling brownish/white flood of tampons completely inundates Ross!!! He has them hanging from his hair, his clothes, everywhere!! He is awash in a flood of Grogans, tp, kotex, tampons, panty shields--you name it!!! I am overcome with hilarity!!! This is life in the plumbing world at its apex!!! Ross just takes it in stride..another job well done! You see, the shit encrusted pencil had turned sideways in the line therefore catching everything in its path. Now the bank, being a bank, has mostly female tellers, hence the abundance of BloodyPussy items. They had congealed for the most part into a homogenous mass that had confounded our tools, but not our spirit and brute strength.

We collected our tools and were soon on our way to the next job, albeit a little smellier, but none the worse for wear. Needless to say, the bank had a sizable withdrawal that day, and I'm sure the tellers received a lecture on the proper disposal of their arcane sanitary devices.

Coming next: Wax Bowl Rings--Friend or Foe?

The 4 Rules of Plumbing

1. Hot on the left
2. Cold on the right
3. Shit runs downhill
4. If it stinks, it's money

[[[[[[[[Bruce]]]]]]]]]

(Originally posted on Sat, 23 Sep)