Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 29, 1993                   TAG: 9311300367
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

YOU WON'T CONFUSE HIM WITH A PLUMBER

I know there are such genes. I know also that I don't have them.

(Now, cut that out. I was not born before the invention of indoor plumbing.)

I will be able to help the young scientist with my vast memory of failures in plumbing.

There was, for example, the incident of Nov. 8, 1966. I was waxing the bathroom floor when I rose up suddenly and hit the bottom of the sink. This loosened the pipes and hurt my back terribly.

I didn't go to the doctor for my back because I wasn't leaking. I called a plumber for my sink.

He came and smugly fixed the leak with a device called a ``basin wrench.'' As soon as the cash flow returned to normal, I bought one of those wrenches.

It has never been handled except for the time we put in a new kitchen faucet.

When people get up enough nerve to visit my basement, I like to show them the wrench and ask them what it is. I find that very few people know a ``basin wrench'' when they see one.

Returning to the present, it was shortly before Thanksgiving that I bought what we veterans of plumbing disasters know as a ``flapper tank ball.'' This may sound a bit obscene, but it's an innocent rubber device that fits down over this tube in your commode tank. It covers this hole and plops up and down to flush or refill the tank.

No wrenches, drills, torches, putty or other equipment are needed to install this device.

People with the manual dexterity of a giraffe have been putting them in for years - people with the plumbing genes, that is.

You just cut off the water - hoping that the cut-off handle doesn't come off in your hand - and push the flapper thing down on this tube until it covers the hole. You then attach a pull chain and become quite arrogant because you know how to do these things.

(I don't like to say this, but people with the plumbing genes are often quite aggressive and overbearing.)

The installation of the flapper is simple except in those instances in which the tube breaks off while you are sliding the flapper onto it.

When this happens, by the way, the warmth goes out of the day and you hear wolves in the woods, although there are no wolves.

Your entire sad plumbing career flashes before your eyes.

Malletheads like yours truly here are tempted to try to fix such disasters themselves. You know: ``Well, it kind of looks like that beauty there screws out, and then you take the hammer and hit that thing up there pretty hard and give that other thing a terrible yank.''

This ``flapper tank ball'' incident was pure catastrophe, however, and I called a plumber.

I hope he doesn't use some fancy wrench I'll have to go out and buy to hang in the basement as a conversation piece.