by Donna Andrews.
One of the questions readers ask that used to bother me was the inevitable “where do you get your ideas?” Writers tend to find this question a lot less interesting than readers, perhaps because we realize that the idea is just the beginning. Having a good idea is great, but then you've got to put in a heck of a lot of work to turn it into a book. In fact, sometimes by the time we finish a book, it's hard to remember how we got the original idea. I bet more than one writer has cast her mind back to the genesis of a book, taken another look at that original idea, and said. “Good grief . . . that turned into this?
Then there are the incidents and adventures that seem, even as we're enduring them, made to go into a mystery plot. For the writer of gloomy and serious books, it's those perils, traumas, and life passages that cause one to mutter things like, “what does not kill us makes us stronger,” or “this, too, shall pass, and then I'll write about it,” or “it's okay. I can kill her in my next book.” For writers like me, who are usually looking for both crime and comedy, it's things like what I call the Saga of the Sewer Pipe.
Just before Halloween I was down in Yorktown, at my mother's old house—the house I grew up in, which we're turning into a vacation house and, if all goes well, maybe a vacation-rental-by-owner place. (All the pictures that accompany this article were taken in Yorktown over the last few months, so you can see why we love having the chance to get back there.) But first we need to bash it back into shape. The latest project on the list was the yard. During the last five or ten years of Dad's life, it had become somewhat overgrown, and in the ten years since his death, it had turned into a jungle. Remember the whole forest of thorns growing up in Sleeping Beauty? You've got the picture. After a few feeble attempts with clippers and a machete—attempts that got us maybe five or six inches farther into the impenetrable shrubbery--my brother and I decided to hire a landscaper to clear out all the junk vegetation while preserving the good stuff. I wanted to be there, both to consult with the landscaper and to take pictures of the progress.
So I went down on Monday the 27th. The landscaper and I had our consultation. I asked him to save all camellias, crepe myrtles, and dogwoods with a few exceptions, like the camellia that had grown up in the middle of the driveway, showing how long it had been since the garage had been empty enough to house a car. And the landscaper understood our desire to maintain as much privacy as possible between our yard and the neighbors, especially the neighbor who seems to have the hobby of reporting people to the county, the police, social services—we definitely did not want her to have a better view and thus more scope for her activities. And then I retreated inside to my laptop and worked on my book, emerging to take more pictures at random intervals. I couldn't write as efficiently under these circumstances—laptop, chain saws, etc.--but I could write.
And everything went very smoothly until Wednesday, when I planned to head home. I ran a load of laundry so we'd have clean towels for next time. I loaded everything into my car except for the camera, so I could take one last batch of pictures. One last visit to the bathroom, and then I'd put the clean clothes in the dryer before heading out to take those photos and--
The toilet didn't flush properly. And as I was coping with the toilet, I heard a small gurgling noise and realized that soapy water from the laundry was starting to bubble up from the shower drain.
We had a sewer problem.
I immediately called a plumbing firm, and after I described the problem, the dispatcher suggested calling the county first, because if the problem was in their lines, fixing it would be free. Sounded good to me. So I called, and within the hour, three workmen from York County's utilities division showed up. The first order of business was to find the sewer cleanout—a length of vertical pipe that gives access to the system so clogs can be banished.
Easier said than done.
Although I had grown up in the house, and had visited my parents frequently over the decades since I left home, I didn't actually know where the pipe leading to the sewer system left the house. I mean, when it's all working, who needs to know that sort of thing? I did, however, know where it was probably located—in the crawl space. The house has a basement under the living room and a crawl space under the rest of the house. Unfortunately, the crawl space was so narrow that the county workmen declined to crawl into it. But they stood at its entrance and studied what they could see with great care and a large flashlight, and eventually began probing for the pipes all around the left front side of the house. Made sense—left side, because all the plumbing is in that end of the house; front because the sewer line runs down the street in front of the house.
Although I was soon to learn that there are more high-tech ways of investigating plumbing, apparently the cheapest and easiest tool for finding pipes is a long, thin metal rod, several feet long and about the diameter of my thumb. You take the rod and probe the ground around where you think the pipe might be, and when instead of sinking into the dirt it hits something hard—voila! You've found the pipe.
That's the theory. In practice it's not that easy. For the next two hours the county utility workers probed and prodded the yard. Every so often they'd whip out the shovels to dig up what they thought was the pipe. They found rocks, bricks, the remnants of a slate walkway, odd bits of metal, and a small foot-square slab of concrete that got them really excited until they found it wasn't covering up anything. By this time the left side of the front yard was pretty well aerated—in fact, had begun to look as if we were afflicted with giant mutant moles--but we were no closer to finding the sewer line.
The county workers suggested calling the commercial plumber back. “Odds are it's in the house anyway,” they said.
I called the plumber.
I should mention that the whole time all this was happening, three or four guys from the landscaping company were dashing about, mostly in the back yard, with chain saws and a chipper shredder, reclaiming the yard from the jungle, making it sometimes hard for the utility guys to hear each other. Or for me to hear myself think.
While I was waiting for the commercial plumber, two of the county men came back. They'd found a map back at their office that suggested that our junction with the county line was precisely 117 feet from the manhole in the middle of the road. They measured out the 117 feet in several possible directions from the manhole with a nifty little wheeled measuring tool, and began probing with the metal rods in the right side of the front yard—the side that hadn't yet been aerated and giant mole-ified. Then they began trying to send a camera down the manhole to track where the pipes went. Aha! High tech tools had arrived!
Unfortunately, the camera was only slightly smaller than the pipe, and had a tendency to get stuck.
Antwan, the plumber, arrived in the middle of this. He suggested that he could probably snake out the blockage by going through the vents on the roof, but not while the county guys were sending their camera down the pipe—I gather snake meeting camera would be a bad thing, mainly for camera. So to while away the time until the county guys gave up on their attempt to coax the camera all the way into the pipe, he asked to see the crawl space. I could tell he wasn't keen on crawling in it either, but he manned up and did so.
He got stuck. And had to dig himself out. But more important, he discovered that the sewer connection didn't go out the front left side of the house. It went out the back. A little more probing with the metal rods—excellent; the back yard also needs aerating—and they found it. And dug up the cleanout vent. By popping off its brass cap—easier said than done with decades-old pipes, but doable—the plumber could snake out the pipe.
Of course, the county utility guys still had to find the place where that pipe met their pipe, presumably after running all the way through the back and side yards. But it was getting dark this time, so the county men went home for the day. They'd be back—probably tomorrow. The tree guys also left, and the voice of the chain saw was silenced for the night. Antwan the plumber tried to climb on the roof to snake the lines out, but in addition to being dark it was also raining, and he almost fell off the roof. Who knew that plumbing was such a dangerous business? He'd be back tomorrow.
I spent another night at the house, trying to use water sparingly.
The next morning the tree guys arrived first. Then four county utility workers in bright fluorescent vests, armed with shovels and a determination to dig up the yard until they found where our pipe joined theirs, in the process creating the impression that the giant mutant moles had migrated from the front to the back and side yard. A good thing this happened while we were still in the demolition phase of the landscaping.
It was at this point that I fled, leaving Reggie, the neighbor who is our guardian angel at the Yorktown house, to supervise the whole thing. I was trying to finish the last few chapters of my book, and wanted to get back in time to watch my nephews trick or treat, and between the chainsaws and the shovels, life at Yorktown had become unconducive to concentration.
It was from Reggie that I learned, while I was still driving home, that the county utility men had uncovered what they thought was a septic tank. “You don't have sewer after all!” they exclaimed.
“Then why have we been paying sewer charges for years?” I asked. I briefly regretted having left so early, because it would have been so much more satisfying to have asked that of the county guys, instead of poor Reggie, who was merely the messenger.
Okay, it made sense that there was once a septic tank—that was probably why the pipe went out the back. But I was pretty sure we hadn't had a septic tank within my memory. Quite apart from the sewer bills, I have no memory whatsoever of the septic tank ever being pumped, and I know what eventually happens if it isn't.
Reggie assured me that it would turn out okay. The county men still had to find the junction where our house should have been connected to the sewer line, because York County has an ordinance forbidding repairs or replacements of septic tanks on streets where the sewer line is available. In the course of doing that, they'd probably find we were connected.
At this point Antwan the plumber called to suggest that his company had a machine that could send a probe down the pipe and find either the septic tank or the sewer connection. It cost a few hundred dollars, but it was very satisfying to hear that yes, we were connected to the sewer after all. So there.
Of course, the fifty- or sixty-year-old pipes were failing in some places and suffering badly from root infiltration and needed repair or replacement. If you haven't already had visions of dollar signs while reading this, then clearly you have never had to have your sewer pipes repaired. But at least it's done now.
And did I mention that in addition to accosting the county utility workers while they were busy with the tricky job of feeding the camera down the sewer line, the overzealous neighbor called the police to complain about the tree cutting? When the deputies came by, they commented on how nice it was looking and wished the tree cutters a good afternoon.
Between finishing and revising and polishing my book and going to Bouchercon, I haven't yet gone down to inspect the final results of all this. I'm looking forward to seeing how much nicer the yard looks as a yard rather than a jungle. And consulting with the landscaper on what needs to be done to cover up the giant mutant mole damage.
And maybe, just maybe, finding a way to make Meg go through what I just survived. Of course Meg would have had an entire house of visitors staying when the plumbing backed up. And in her world there would be not four or five but at least a dozen workmen probing the yard with iron rods and digging up any number of random stone and metal objects buried therein. And Meg and Michael would have finally gotten the grass growing in the very same part of the yard that needed to be dug up to find the pipe. And her children would have joined in the digging. And the plumber—probably a Shiffley, since we'd be in Caerphilly--really would have fallen off the roof—with Meg's father to patch him up, naturally. And the result of this day of chaos would be not a repaired septic pipe and a repairable lawn but the discovery of a body.
I can't wait to write about Meg's adventures.
I just hate living them.