My house seems to be sporting a lot of holes lately. My rottweiler has dug so many huge ones in the yard, a burglar wouldn’t have a chance of sneaking up to the house in the dark without breaking a leg.
Same with the two back decks. They seem to have new holes popping up in the wood every day. I’m pretty sure carpenter ants are to blame because I saw a hefty-looking black ant pop up out of one of the holes.
I can’t help but think how ironic it is, because there was a time when I actually wanted someone to put holes in my house, back when it was being built, but I couldn’t get anyone to do it.
For example, the guy who installed the septic system brought the pipe up to the house’s concrete foundation and stopped there.
"I only go up to the wall," he said, "not through it."
So he left me with a septic pipe outdoors, connected to nothing indoors, which wasn't going to do me much good if I wanted to flush the toilet. I figured that the plumber must be the one who'd finish the job, so I called him.
I figured wrong.
"I go only as far as the inside wall," he said. "I don't make the hole through it."
So there sat the inside pipe and the outside pipe, separated only by a wall of concrete, with neither connected to the other because the septic guy and the plumber didn't have “hole-boring” in their job descriptions.
"What do you think I should do?" I asked my Uncle Lenny, a retired contractor.
"Well, I suppose I could rent a machine and put the hole through the foundation for you,” he said.
I could tell by his tone, however, that he'd probably rather leap into shark-infested waters while wearing a swimsuit made of raw meat.
The plumber did mention someone he could get to do the job…for about the same price as a small used car. I decided that for that price, I'd rather use a hammer and chisel and chip away at the wall myself.
Oddly enough, I ran into a similar problem with the bathroom vanities, when I called a countertop installer.
“No problem putting in the countertops,” he said, “But not the sinks.”
"Why not?" I asked him.
"I don't cut out holes," he said.
I was beginning to think that all contractors had an aversion to putting holes in anything. Perhaps it stemmed from childhood nightmares about being attacked by a giant chunk of Swiss cheese or falling into the Grand Canyon.
And the final straw came when I asked the electrician if he could install 3 lampposts along the marathon-length driveway.
"I'll put them in," he said, "but only after you have someone dig a trench for the wiring first. I don't pay my guys $45 an hour to dig holes."
Again, an aversion to holes…except in his body, judging from all of his piercings.
I remember thinking back then that a contractor could make a bundle if he specialized in nothing but making holes in stuff. He could call his business something like "The Hole Shebang."
But now, 12 years later, I’m looking for just the opposite – someone to bury and/or patch all of the holes.
Which reminds me of that old riddle, “How much dirt is in a hole three feet wide and six feet deep?”
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| MY DOG FOUND THE SEPTIC PIPE! |
My dog definitely could change that in about ten seconds.
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