The Jowers family vacation started off weird. On vacation day one, I had to be in Memphis. Wife Brenda decided that she and daughter Jess would take a rental car to our Dauphin Island, Ala., hideaway. I would take the family car to Memphis, then drive down two days later. It sounded easy enough.
But things turned goofy on getaway Friday when Brenda went to pick up the rental car. Brenda walked up to the woman at the car rental counter, handed in her reservation paperwork, and announced that she was ready for her non-smoking Taurus.
“Sorry, honey,” the lacquer-haired woman said, “we don’t have any Tauruses. But we’ve got a Plymouth Breeze.”
“I specifically reserved a Taurus,” Brenda insisted, “which is a perfectly good mid-size car, unlike a Breeze, which is just a minor upgrade from a stolen shopping cart.”
“Ma’am,” the woman tapped her long red fingernails on the counter, “it’s either a Breeze or a Ford Ranger pickup truck.”
Brenda brightened up. “Let’s see the Ranger.”
The woman pointed to a truck in the parking lot: a new Ranger pickup, with a hard tonneau cover over the bed, all irradiated-Smurf blue. Fancy chrome wheels. A real mom-and-daughter adventure vehicle.
“Give me those keys,” Brenda said. She plucked them from the woman’s hand, then grabbed the luggage. As she and Jess headed toward the parking lot, another woman walked up to the rental counter. “I’m here for the Ranger pickup,” she said.
“Sorry, honey,” the counter woman said. “All we’ve got is Plymouth Breezes.”
For eight hours and 500 miles, Brenda and Jess collected winks and adoring looks from tattooed men wearing wife-beater tank tops. Thank goodness they made it to Dauphin Island. I left Memphis a half-day early, and joined Brenda and Jess Saturday night.
Jess met me at the door. “Daddy,” she moaned, “the cable TV doesn’t work.”
“There are a few other problems,” Brenda said. “We’ll talk about them in the morning.”
Before breakfast, I learned that last fall’s Hurricane Georges had flattened the Primestar dish, one of the window blinds had fallen down and hit Brenda on the head, and the lamps and fans in the living room didn’t work. Just after lunch, as I was standing on the house’s rooftop observation deck, one of the neighbors told me that water was periodically squirting out of the drain plumbing underneath the house. By dinnertime, the commodes wouldn’t flush.
The next morning, I went to the real estate office, and talked to Mizz Cathy, the nice lady who had arranged for us to rent the house.
“Problem one,” I said, “no cable TV.”
“The cable people swear to me that there’s nothing wrong with it,” she explained. “But I’ll call them.”
“Problem two: Dead lamps and fans in the living room. Dead fixtures mean loose wires, and loose wires worry me.”
“I’ll call the electrician,” she said.
“Problem three: The commodes will only flush about once an hour. The drains gurgle. That means the main drain is clogged. We’ll need a plumber today, not tomorrow.”
“I’ll call the plumber.”
“Finally, the bad news is a window blind fell on Brenda’s head, and some of the slats broke. The good news is if y’all don’t hassle us about the broken slats, Brenda’s neck and back pain will probably subside.”
“We won’t even mention the broken slats.”
To her great credit, Mizz Cathy had the cable guy, an electrician, and a plumber at the house within an hour. The cable guy hooked up the cable connection at the utility pole. The electrician fixed the loose wires, and the dead circuits came back to life.
The plumber, however, told a sad tale. “Looks like you’ve got two problems,” he said. “First, your main sewer line is broken. Second, even if it were fine, it wouldn’t work, because the whole sewer system on this road is filled with sand.”
“Sweet Baby Jesus!” I said. “How does that happen?”
“The hurricane made it happen,” he said. “It moved a lot of water, and that water moved a lot of sand. Now we’ve got sand where there used to be pipes, and pipes where there used to be sand. It’s a mess.”
“How long will it take to fix all that?” I wondered, figuring I’d have to move the family into a motel.
“I’ll call the city water and sewer folks,” he said. “They’ll start on it first thing in the morning.”
Now, I’ve been lied to by hundreds of contractors. I tend to doubt ’em. But, sure enough, the next morning, there was a backhoe digging up our sand road, a truckful of plumbing bubbas laying sewer pipe, and a whopping-big Roto-Rooter truck cleaning sand out of the sewer system. At 10 a.m., there were holes in the road big enough to bury a half-dozen Cadillacs. By noon, the whole sewer system on my street was fixed, and the road was repaired.
Even with all the house gremlins, I’m glad I went to Dauphin Island. So far, it’s the only place I’ve been where the cable guy shows up on time, the electricians can find the loose wires in one day, and the plumbers finish their work ahead of time.
I’m going back next year. If I ever retire, I might even retire there.
Visit Walter’s Web site at http://www.nashscene.com/~housesense, or you can e-mail him at walter.jowers@nashville.com.
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