The Seattle Plumbing Mortician

Recently at Gene Johnson Plumbing we have had 2 disturbing service calls that makes us feel like a disgusting trend is developing.

The first was a call from an apartment building that had their parking garage broken into and had all their copper waste and water pipes stolen. Can you imagine? Waking up and having no water. You wander into the parking garage to check if the water is on and there is water and sewer everywhere and no plumbing to be found except stubs of copper sticking out of the floor and wall. You have just had your plumbing stolen by a crack head. Thats right…someone stole the copper pipes and turned them into a scrap yard for not very much money…maybe a couple hundred dollars. But to you…a huge inconvenience…and a hefty bill to replumb the building.

The second call was a from a restaurant. They came in to find their plumbing not working as well. In their case the crack heads had crawled into the crawl space and stolen the copper pipes. The police said the value of the copper they took was maybe $150. But for the restaurant owner it was a nightmare. When I talked to her she said she had been shut down for 4 day. Her sales are about $2,000 a day on week days and $3,000 on weekends. She estimated a loss so far of at least $10,000 and untold customers who very well may think that she has gone out of business. Plus thousands of dollars to put all the plumbing back. And to think all that to get a druggy $150 and a couple fixes.

So in response to this growing trend, I have made a new sign to detract the druggy. It’s a Copper Free Sign that can be posted on a building in an attempt to deter the crack head….as long as he can read that is.

In any case…I though it was worth a try. If you want one, or know someone that does…we can get them made for $50 and will bring them out and install them for free if it is in the Seattle area.

And by all means…stay off the drugs!

Bacon Fudge

I made a batch of Bacon Fudge for Valentines Day that turned out great! Many have asked for the recipe so here goes:

Ask the meat department for the most flavorable bacon they have and buy a large package…maybe 2 pounds.
Using scissors cut the bacon slices in half the long way then cut it up into little squares. Mine were about a centimeter square.
Put the pile of bacon you just made in a large skillet and fry at medium-high heat for about 10 minutes until the bacon is complete submerged in it’s own oil and crisp. Dump the lot into a strainer and collect the grease for some other use…like making fire starters. Do not poor down the drain or you will need to call Gene Johnson Plumbing. Set the bacon aside to cool.

Now here is my famous recipe for fudge…passed down from my mom and always the best at any holiday gathering…at least that’s what everybody says when I ask them.

Break up 3.5 “Giant” hershey bars into small pieces and put on a plate. Poor 1 bag of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips on the plate as well and set aside ready and waiting to be poored into the boiling mixture you will make next.

Open 2 jars of marshmallow cream and set beside plate of chocolate.

In a large pot add 1 cube of butter, 1 can evaporated milk, 4.5 cups of sugar.

Now bring this to a boil, on medium-high heat. Be sure to stir constantly making sure to scrape the entire bottom of pot reqularly. If you miss parts…the sugar will burn and no one will like your fudge.

When it starts to boil, stir vigorously for 6 minutes. When 6 minutes are up turn heat to low, dump in bacon and stir a couple of times, then dump in the marshmallow cream and stir a few times and finally dump in the chocalate plate. Now you really have to stir hard as the mix will start to get thick and your wrist and arm will scream for mercy.

Now is the time that you realize that you forgot to prepare a pan by rubbing butter all over the bottom and sides of the pan! So don’t forget to do this before any of the other instructions. (Aren’t you glad you read all of the instructions before starting like the teach always said?)

Dump the hot bacon fudge into the buttered pan and smooth out with a spatulla and get ready to defend the pan of left over fudge as everyone will start grabbing spoons and trying to snag a scoop of hot fudge.

I find it best to let the fudge set for 24 hours, if you have any kind of will power. In any case, let it cool for some time and then cut into nice size pieces.

You do not have to tell anyone that there is bacon in the fudge as you will not be able to see it. If you are anything like me, you will enjoy letting your guests discover the bacon on their own.

Be prepared…most will not like it, but the reaction will be worth the effort.

Enjoy.

At Gene Johnson Plumbing we don’t collect final payment until the job is complete and the customer is satisfied.

Four years ago my wife, Rebekah, and I, had an opportunity to go in with Kimberly my wife’s sister, (or during the day, my business partner) and her husband Aaron and buy a cabin. It was a great deal. Just an hour and 15 minutes northeast of Seattle, not on the market yet, completely run down but…on Lake Cavanaugh.

Did I mention it had no running water, or sewer system? That was four years ago now and still we have no running water or sewer. You know what they say, “The plumber’s house is the last one to get plumbing.” Needless to say, my appreciation for running water and warm toilets has grown immensely.

So when we go to the cabin, guess what we spend most of our time talking about and planning for. That’s right, how to get running water and a working sewer system. Should we get running water first or a septic system? How much is it, should we put it in ourselves or hire it out? Where would it go? How do we purify the water from the lake? And whose turn is it to stir the outhouse?

Watching movies and TV shows has changed as well. I find myself pointing out to the kids, every chance I get, every movie, TV scene, or book that illustrates how so many have put up with the minor inconvenience of no running water or working sewer. Case in point – while watching the classic movie “The God’s Must Be Crazy” (you really must see it if you haven’t), I could not help but blurt out some comment about how Xi (the adorable bushman) doesn’t have running water or even know what a sewer system is and he seems perfectly happy.

To my kid’s dismay, it will probably be a while before the plumbing situation changes at the cabin, but my appreciation for the luxury of on-demand running water and even hot water, and a warm, convenient way to get rid of my….waste….continues to grow.

In America we take our plumbing for granted. We really don’t think of running water, hot running water, our sewer systems, where the water comes from or where it goes, unless it stops working in some way or we are on a job site that doesn’t have the plumbing system working, and the Honey Bucket hasn’t been delivered yet, in those situations…well that’s for another blog day.

So give your closest plumbing fixture a hug…or maybe just your plumber. (I got a visual on that and it just wasn’t right.)

What is your favorite plumbing fixture?

Dead Puppies

PS. I love organ music.

I find myself working around deep holes in the ground and recently realized this goes way back.  Now it is giant holes in the ground, 10, 12, 17 feet deep,  to make sewer repairs, but it used to be 6 feet deep ones at cemeteries as a funeral director.  I remember my first encounter with a deep hole…it was a fox hole.

My cousin Rob was a Marine and came to visit.  My brother and I were fortunate enough to have a “sand box” that was something like 60 feet by 30 feet.  It had 2 swingsets and plenty of open area we could do what ever we wanted with.  Cousin Rob showed us what a fox hole was.  He dug a hole straigh down, in what seemed like no time and jumped in and showed how he could stay in there and hide, sleep, and even jump out and supprise his enemy as they came by.  Then he left.  Joe and I were facinated with the whole idea.  We were something like 9 and 12 years old and as soon as we had a chance we went to work on our own fox hole.  We dug and dug and dug.  It took a lot longer than we thought, but we were amazed at how big a hole we were able to make.  Ours was much wider than his but both of us could hunker down in there and hide. 

We got the bright idea to  cover it up so no one would could tell it was there.  We found an old tire and some scrap lumber and made a makeshift lid.  The tire was supposed to be our access hole.  Then we covered it with dirt and weeds so no one, not even our parents knew that it was there.  It was our very one secret fox hole!

But we never got to actually use it.

You see, we lived on an orchard.  16 acres of apples and 3 acres of cherries.  My dad would periodically have to spray the fruit trees and once in a while he would back the big sprayer and tractor right into our yard and spray the yard too.  (Our sand box was situated between the orchard and the house.)

We came home from school, walking as we always did and all was normal, until we came up to the front door and saw some comotion in the sand box out of the corner of our eye.  The comotion was my dad.  He had picked this day to back up the tractor into the yard to spray.  He had no idea of our fox hole until he had backed the sprayer and tractor right over….and then into it.  What we saw was a complete disaster, our fox hole completely caved in with part of a big spayer and tractor in it, completely stuck.  My dad had got our other tractor out and was trying to pull the stuck one out  with  big toe rope and tires were spinning and dirt was flying high in the air!  Dad was mad…but not as mad as I thought he would be.  I sensed he had a little pride in what we had been able to do.  But he warned us to never do it again…and we didn’t.

When I started work in the funeral home, I began to encounter a strange farewell.

It started when I first began to meet with families – planning, coordinating and directing the funeral and memorial services of their loved ones. Everything would seem to go perfectly. The family conference would go well – sure, it was a bad day, usually sad, sometimes tragic, but we would get through it and put something meaningful together that would honor the one that had passed. The day of the funeral would come and usually all would go well. The family was pleased with the casket, mom looked like mom, brother Joe amazingly restrained himself from saying something too terribly inappropriate like he usually does at most family functions. (Like the time when the ministers came over for dinner and he, completely out of the blue, starts wondering out loud “where the half rack of Coors Light is” and asking “who drank it all?”) I could go on and on with those kind of stories!

Back to the funeral…everyone is so pleased things went well…and the grandkids were so cute singing “I’m going to let my light shine” cause it was grandmas favorite song. This is when it happens. The spokesperson for the family, the outgoing one who helps keep the entire family on track makes her way over to me and I know just what she is about to say. Something like, “Thank you so much, everything was great”…and then… “don’t take this wrong…but I hope I never see you again.”

Of course I understand what they mean…but after putting so much of myself into their family and service I wish it could be different. Eventually I began to beat them to the punch and just after they said “Thanks and took a breath to say it…I would smile and say…”please don’t take this wrong…but I hope I never see you again…unless, of course…it’s in the grocery store or something.” We would both laugh and they would eventually make their way to the door to take on their new life without their loved one.

So now, I own Gene Johnson Plumbing & Heating and again, am involved with helping people through some bad times. Maybe it’s a faucet that won’t stop dripping or maybe it’s the worst…the sewer is backing up all over the basement with the new carpet. In any case…whenever people give us a call it’s a bad day. Maybe not the worst…but definitely bad…after all, they are going to dip into their flat screen TV savings fund, just to take care of the plumbing issue.

But again the same thing happens! We get the call, we roll out as quickly as possible, let them know we are on the way, send an email resume and picture of the crew coming, take a look at the situation, agree on a price and get right to work. We fix the problem, do what we say we will do and clean up after ourselves and then it’s time to take care of the paper work, and money. We go to leave, shaking hands and thanking them for calling us and thanking them for their business, and more often than not, we hear that dreaded farewell again… “boy I hope it’s a long time before I see you again!” Again, I understand…we just took their life saving, it would seem, but still I wish the call could end with a friendly “ See you next time.” Or even “See you tomorrow” like all the Starbucks baristas get to say after every encounter with an addicted customer. Then again, I don’t have that dreaded “useless degree in Art History or Star Trek”

There was a time in my life, when I didn’t have a care in the world…regarding where the water in the shower came from or where the “stuff” in the toilet went.  I would simply turn the handle on the faucet and lots of water would come out and when I pushed the lever on the toilet….the stuff just disappeared, and I would go on my merry way.

Then I married Rebekah Johnson, the daughter of Gene Johnson, of Gene Johnson Plumbing.  One day she pointed out a number of big trucks in the road and a giant hole and a number of men working.  She said it was her dad’s company doing a big sewer job deep down in the middle of the street.  (Obviously I had not taken much interest in the family business yet)  That was my first awareness of the vast plumbing system, running unseen underneath all our streets and houses.   It was then, that I realized how much I took our modern day plumbing system for granted.  I realized that once I turned the handle, or pressed the valve, I didn’t think much about where it came from or where it went.

Years later, I ended up working for Gene Johnson Plumbing, and within a week or so experienced the Great Debate for the very first time.

Everything would be going along just fine when Lee would say something about the American Standard Cadet Round Front toilet he had just installed.  Then Ben would question him on why he didn’t sell and install the elongated model as it flushed better.  Then Lee would say it didn’t and then Ben would say it absolutely did and the Great Debate was on.  The rest of us found it quite amusing, these two grown men, both plumbers arguing about the flushing abilities of their toilets.

The truth was it was an important debate.  Our reputation as plumbers was on the line, and things weren’t going very well.  When the Federal Government, starting in 1994, mandated that all toilets in the U.S. could only use 1.6 gallons of water, where they had been used to 3.5 or even 5 gallons per flush.  Stuff didn’t flush well for quite a period of time, and everyone, both customer and plumber were frustrated with their toilet’s performance.  “How are we saving water when we have to flush twice?”  was a question heard almost daily.

Then Matt came to work for us.  He was an old friend that grew up in a plumbing family and had spent the last couple of years working at a fixture house in Hawaii selling plumbing fixtures.  One day he walked in just as the Great Debate was really heating up.  He listened for a minute and asked, “Why aren’t we selling TOTO toilets?”  A hush fell on the Great Debate, and finally one asked, “What’s a TOTO?”  “TOTO is the only toilet that works and it’s awesome, why would you sell anything else?”  Matt said.  Within minutes, he was on the phone and one was on the way.  When it arrived, we installed it and it worked!  We ran numerous experiments on it by flushing different amounts of toilet paper and stuff down it and it didn’t plug!  Our belief in “low flow” or what we now call High Efficiency Toilets soared.  We are now serious fans and provide and install them regularly.

As for the Great Debate, the good ol Scientific Method has taken over.  They now use a soy paste that is the consistency of ‘stuff’ and measure out 1000 grams of it.  One toilet can pass 1,500 grams of it without clogging!  I was in a Green Plumbing class when this was announced and demonstrated and my brother-in-law Gene Johnson Jr. blurted out “that is a sh_ _ -ton of stuff!”  If you have ever seen 1,500 grams of soy paste…well trust me, it’s an inhuman amount of stuff.  So now the plumbers refer to how many sh_ _-tons a toilet can successfully pass, and most on the market perform much better than the old 5 gallon per flush toilets did.

But the toilet manufactures are not finished yet, I just took delivery of a new .8 gallon per flush toilet!  We are going to put it to the test, the old fashioned way and if it holds up to the abuse…well you will soon be hearing about it!

We Will All Go Together When We Go