Grandma Henke

I wrote this a long time ago and thought It was something you might enjoy reading.   Every now and then I will post some of my writings.

I married a “fix-it” man.    I discovered 6 weeks into marriage that if I can break it, he can fix it.    And if he can’t fix it,  it must not be broke.

When we joined in humble matrimony we became the proud owners of an old,  little,  trailer house that “be it ever so humble there was NO place like our home”.   It seemed like it was about 2 feet by 10 feet, but that must be wrong because it had 3 rooms, a front-room/kitchen combo, a bathroom/hall combo, and a room that held a very saggy double bed.   And, did I mention it was OLD or that you could watch the bugs under the trailer while sitting in the bathroom?   But, still, it was a cozy little love-nest if you were into having snow-drifts on the inside of your windowsills.

I had no idea that farm boys grew up to be such ingenius fellows.   Before my eyes he turned into Hunka Super Fixer.   If he’d but had an agent he and his unique toolbox could have starred in his own television sitcom.    His main tools were elastics, paper clips, a wire hanger, bailing twine, household gadgets … a toothbrush, and/or an extra skinny carrot.

One afternoon after washing up a couple of meals worth of dirty dishes, I pull the plug to drain the sink and nothing happened.   No glug glug glug, no bubbles, no cute little tornado whirling around the drain.  Nothing.  I look over my shoulder and ask, “What’s the matter with this sink?”    New hubby says, “Hmmm.    Maybe it has something stuck in the drain.”    ”Well, duh!”  I think but don’t say.

He finds a 1/2  cup measuring device to scoop out the water and tries to look down the drain with a flashlight.  ”Yup, there must be sumthin’ down there, alright,” he says.    (Is that supposed to be John Wayne?)    I say, “How are you going to get it out?”  He gives me the “‘I’m the man”  look and says, “Easy.   I’ll wiggle it with something long and skinny and it will flush out.”   That sounds reasonable to me and I tell him so.   Quickly he clicks his heels together, gives me a salute  (after all he IS in the ROTC) and smartly marches off for his toolbox.    I’m impressed. Hunka Man in action!

The next thing I know he’s back with a toothbrush, that he proceeds to poke down the drain.   With widened eyeballs, I gasp, “What are you doing?”   He says, “Stay calm, Ted.   I’m stirring it to loosen it so I can flush it out.   I’ve almost got it.”   I stifle a snicker/snort, and he says, “No, really.”   I scowl at him.   “Whose toothbrush is that, anyway?”   He mumbles back,    “I’m not sticking the brush part down.”   I scowl louder.  “Whose toothbrush is that?”  He pretends not to hear.

“There, it moved down” says The Man, “but there’s a slight problem.”   ”What do you mean, slight problem?’” I ask.   He mutters, “The toothbrush in the drain.  But, I think I can see it.   I can get it out if I have the right tool.”  I say, “Maybe you should just take the thing-a ma-jigger off under the sink and get it out.”   ”Nah”, he answers,  “I just need something long and skinny.”   Next thing he’s sporting a long, real skinny carrot, which, with a flourish, he waves at the drain like a magic wand.   I expect to hear, “abra-cadabra”, and am not disappointed.   I warn, “You’re going to drop the carrot down the drain you know.”   He says, “Nah, this is a piece of cake.”  The next “Uh Oh” I hear prompts me to ask, “What do you mean, uh oh?”   “Just uh oh,” he responds as he studies the drain in the kitchen sink.     It’s now my turn to talk so I say, “You dropped the carrot down the drain, huh?”   He nods.    “Well, yeah, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get it out.”   My reply is, “Sure, you just need something long and skinny.”   This time I don’t snicker.

Well, of course, he can’t get either of them out because the pipe is too full for anything else that is long and skinny and danged if I’m going to loan him my eyebrow tweezers.   He decides it’s time to remove the thing-a-ma-jigger.  He purses his lips, compresses his eyebrows, clasps his hands together, twists them inside out to a full stretch, nods his head a few times and says in his serious voice,  “I need to find some different tools.”  I am a semi-fast learner and now that we’ve been married 6 weeks I know about “if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.”   I just nod my head and watch.   He looks in his toolbox and to my astonishment finds a real tool, like you would buy at the hardware, and says, “Come ‘ere ya little wrench,”  and proceeds to twist the heck out of the pipes under the sink.  I say, “What about the water?”  He says, “There isn’t any water in it now. I knocked what was blocking it loose with your toothbrush.”  I glare at him openly and say, “Hmmm”.    Next thing I hear is the now familiar, “Uh Oh”, which is followed by the sound of running water.   And then, with the flare of a magician sporting cape and black hat, he pulls out my toothbrush, the carrot, a glob of grease, and a bottle cap … and proudly exclaims,  ”There!”   I say, “Hmmmm” as I stare at my toothbrush.

He puts everything back together with a dramatical “Ta Da” and turns on the water.   The sink immediately fills, but it doesn’t drain.   He raises one eyebrow and says,  “Hmmm, something must be lower down the pipe.   I will have to operate.”    I quickly grab the carrot and the toothbrush as I struggle to hold, then bite, my tongue.

He puts the stopper in the sink and instructs me to “stand by but don’t touch anything until I give the word.”   Then out he goes to crawl under the trailer.    I hear him mumble something about a joint, but I decide not to ask.   Soon he calls, “Will you bring me the bastard?”    I yell back, “Don’t you swear at me!”     ”No!” he replies in a way that tells me he is rolling his eyes, “That file in my tool box.   It’s a bastard.”    ”How did you know that?”  I ask in amazement as I hand him the poor fatherless file.    He just shakes his head and starts jamming it up the separated pipe.   I go back inside to hang out by the sink as we converse back and forth through our plumbing.   “I think I got it now!” he calls up.

Well, I figure it is fixed,  ya know?   I mean if somebody says, “I think I got it now” wouldn’t you suppose you’d just been given the word?    Well, so did I.    I pulled the plug and turned the water on about the same time I hear, “Don’t pull the ppppplllllllluuuuuuuggggg … TURN OFF THE WATER!”

I run to look under the trailer and say “Oh.”   He looks at me with bad stuff dripping off his hair and face and says,   “Just Oh?”   ”Ohhhhh Boy,”  I say with a nod of my head.   “It looks like the little bastard really did the job,”  I add.   “Hmmm,”  he answers as he shakes the moisture off the tip of his Hunka Man nose.

@Edna Henke, Ivins, Utah 84738

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