This is when I came up with the idea of making a lump. I backed the trailer over to a section of our yard that had always looked like it could use some perking up, landscapingwise, and I created this free-form pile of concrete that is not only attractive, but also very durable. If, millions of years from now, when all other man-made structures have disappeared, intelligent life forms from other galaxies visit the planet Earth, they will find this lump, and they will wonder what kind of being created it, and for what purpose. I bet basketball will never occur to them.
And the hell of it is, the concrete lump was one of my better projects, in the sense that I also got a working basketball POst Out Of it. Most of the other ones turned out much worse. The full impact of this was driven home to me forcibly when we decided to sell the Pennsylvania house, and we paid several thousand dollars (I am still not making this up) to two men, both named Jonathan, to come over and eliminate all traces of all my homeowner projects—bookshelves where you could see the shapes of dead insects under the paint, paneling that looked like it had been installed by vandals, etc.—in an effort to make our home look as nice as it did before I started improving it. After the Jonathans took out all my projects, the house mostly consisted of holes, which they filled up with Spackle. When prospective buyers would ask: “What kind of construction is this house?” I would answer: “Spackle.”
So to get back to my original point, I am now violently opposed to doing anything myself. I think there should be a federal law requiring people who publish do-it-yourself books to include a warning, similar to what the Surgeon General has on cigarette packs, right on the cover of the book, stating:
WARNING: ANY MONEY YOU SAVE BY DOING HOMEOWNER PROJECTS YOURSELF WILL BE OFFSET BY THE COST OF HIRING COMPETENT PROFESSIONALS TO COME AND REMOVE THEM SO YOU CAN SELL YOUR HOUSE, NOT TO MENTION THE EMOTIONAL TRAUMA ASSOCIATED WITH LISTENING To THESE PROFESSIONALS, AS THEY RIP OUT LARGE HUNKS OF A PROJECT, LAUGH AND YELL REMARKS SUCH AS: “HEY! GET A LOAD OF THIS.”
So now you are asking yourself: “Okay, if I’m not supposed to do anything myself, how am I supposed to get my house fixed?” The answer is: contractors. A contractor is a man with a pickup truck and a set of business cards that say something like:
ED BROGAN Inc. General Contractor
All Types of Construction and Repair—30 Years Experience—Quality Work Fully Bonded and Insured Free Estimates—Reasonable Rates
“We Never Show up”
No, I am of course kidding about that last line. They won’t tell you that they never show up; this is a secret that they are sworn to uphold during the graduation ceremony at the Contractor Academy, where each man receives his Official Contractor’s battered toolbox, which contains, not tools, but thousands and thousands of traditional handcrafted contractor excuses for not showing up, such as:
“I strained my back.”
“My truck has a flat tire.”
“My wife is having a baby.”
“My uncle died.”
“My wife strained her back.”
“My uncle has a flat tire.”
“My truck is having a baby.”
These time-honored excuses have been handed down through many contractor generations, dating all the way back to ancient Rome, where the original contractors built the ruins. Contrary to what historians will try to tell you, the ruins were never finished buildings: they were always ruins. The Romans kept trying to get the contractors to come back and finish them, but the contractors kept coming up with excuses, the oldest recorded one being “Quid vox probenium est” (“My wife strained her uncle”). Eventually the Romans simply had to learn to live in the ruins. You, as a homeowner, will have to do the same thing.
The Basic Contracting Process
The contractor comes to your house and strides around in a confidence-inducing fashion, taking measurements and writing things down on a clipboard. What he is writing down is the batting averages of the 1978 Boston Red Sox, which he will multiply by the relative humidity to come up with an “estimate,” which is legally defined as “the amount of money you will ultimately spend on phone calls in a fruitless effort to locate the contractor.” Once you have agreed to the “estimate,” the contractor will leave, telling you that he will come back and start work on “Thursday.” Four to thirteen weeks later, the contractor shows up with two workmen selected on the basis of owning T-shirts festooned with photographs of rock bands with names like “Death Penis.” The contractor leaves the workmen behind and informs you that he will be back on “Thursday.” Then he disappears. The workmen take all of your furniture and put it out on your patio, then they knock down a wall. Neither of these steps necessarily has anything to do with the job at hand. This is just basic contracting procedure. Having completed these tasks, the workmen take a well-earned “lunch break.” They will never come back again. There is nothing you can do about this. You can search all the way through the United States Constitution, and you will find a great number of statements in there about unimportant issues such as the vice president, but you will find nothing about getting workmen back to your house. What we need is a constitutional amendment. It would say: ARTICLE MXLICBM: If workmen come to your house and screw everything up, they shall either (a) have to come back and at least try to make it normal again or (b) be subjected to powerful electric shocks in their private parts.
Interesting Sidelight:
Modern science has been unable to determine where workmen disappear to. At one time it was believed that they went to other jobs, but we now know that there are no “other jobs,” because if there were, then eventually, somewhere, some homeowner’s house would actually get worked on, and you would read about this astounding event in The New York Times.
WORKMEN WORK ON HOME, the headline would say, and huge crowds of worshipful homeowners would flock to marvel at the worked-upon home, similar to the way the religious faithful sometimes flock to rural communities when somebody has discovered a bale of peat moss shaped like the Lord.
Approximately six weeks later, the contractor returns and notes with displeasure that the workmen have failed to disconnect the plumbing and electrical systems. “Always disconnect the plumbing and electrical systems, even if you are merely building an outdoor deck!” is a rule that is stressed repeatedly at the Contractor Academy. Angrily, the contractor performs these vital tasks, then, assuring you that he will be back “Thursday,” he disappears. You cannot grab him. A skilled contractor can actually cause himself to dematerialize, into hyperspace, right before your eyes.
What ultimately may happen is, you’ll get so desperate that, despite my stern warnings, you will attempt to actually do things yourself. One Saturday morning you’ll get up bright and early, and you’ll go down to the Homeowner Hell. This is a nationwide chain of stores, each of which is approximately the size of Indonesia and is filled with billions and billions of random and obscure hardware objects such as “toggle bolts,” which are packed inside special plastic blister packs, which you cannot open except with special razor knives sold only inside blister packs at Homeowner Hell. It is a comical sight indeed to see hundreds of homeowners peering at these objects with a total lack of comprehension, like fish examining a nuclear submarine. The contractors love to watch this via closed-circuit television from the Parallel Contractor Universe. It is their favorite show.