More on plumbing

Before I forget the incident (I frankly doubt I ever will) I wanted to relate another plumbing story that happened several years ago as we moved into our current home. At that time, we were doing lots of renovations and not a single day would go without one of us with a paint brush in hand doing repainting or touch-up work. One day, the toilet bowl in our powder room got clogged and, as always, I tried to come to the rescue with my various tools, including the classic plunger, my portable “snake” and finally, as nothing seemed to work, an abortion-doctor coat hanger.

All my attempts remained in vain and fearing some Loch Ness monster haunting the big pipes underneath the toilet bowl, I decided to dismount the latter, a major plumbing job. I did it but after thoroughly exploring the pipes below and short of jumping into the street's sewer manhole, I still couldn't the roots of the problem. I then re-installed the porcelain seat, but the clog was still there. I knew the appliance was either possessed by some solid-waste demon or was playing a trick on me and decided to replace it with a new one. Once more I dismounted it and replaced it.

This time it finally worked, everything flowed marvelously and before tossing the defective piece into the garbage, I had to satisfy my curiosity by breaking the lower portion of the bowl with a hammer. That's only then that the source of the clog popped into full daylight. A medium-size paintbrush had found its way in the middle of the siphon and was solidly jammed in, letting the snake and other thin metal wire through but certainly not the other stuff... That's when I began to feel that plumbing had been my vocation all along!