I WAS GOING TO CALL THIS COLUMN “Toilet stories,” but “Emergency vehicle” better suits this first story and since it’s a rainy night, just after quitting time, it lends itself better to a little more drama. I’ll save “Toilet stories” for another time.

Monday late afternoon, this week, just home from work, still in our 11-month doing paperwork for a loan modification on our home, 5:50 p.m., raining lightly outside, and my pocket cell phone rings. I recognize the name, a customer of mine in Vallejo along Columbus Parkway. Her brother and sister-in-law are in town and the hallway toilet is sounding strange. “The water flushes but keeps on running.” Knowing it could be something possibly damaging, I agree to be there in 15 minutes, grab my outside jacket from the front porch bench where it’s drying and climb back into my emergency vehicle, a well-packed 2003 Toyota pickup that I call “The Tan Pony,” complete with camper shell and lumber rack — you may have seen it around town in one of two counties.

En route, I ponder the possibilities: the flapper valve could be corrugated from water chemicals and leaking; the float valve could be defective, causing the water level to overflow the center safety overflow tube; or something else. I ponder how wet I’ll get in the rain on her front driveway, and which tools I’ll need for hopefully a simple solution. Columbus Parkway at 6 p.m. on a winter, rainy night with reflective lights only from oncoming traffic is a very dark place. Last time I was here I recall seeing only one forlorn street light. “Windshield wipers slapping time,” I think about Kris Kristofferson and his “Me and Bobby McGee.”

Backing into the customer’s driveway, I see the exterior motion-detecting lights we put in last summer are working well. I’m not an intruder, the house knows me well — I’ve been here before. The customer greets me at the door and in no time I remove her toilet tank lid and see the problem: the old-style float arm has lost its arc over time and the water level is too high, slowly overflowing into the center safety tube and now exiting through her toilet bowl and into the sewer line below her house. I bend the float arm more generously, explain to her what I’m doing, flush the toilet two or three times, it comes back to a safe level each time. All else is working fine. I explain to her the four to six parts that can go wrong with a toilet tank, and she’s relieved by what little I’m going to charge her.

To be safe, I ask her about the other toilet and its condition in the master bathroom. So we go look. She explains that this is the original, never been replaced, it’s as old as the house, maybe 35 years. This one has the same problem but a different float type and a little different solution. Over time the plastic center safety tube has been chipped away by rough handling from the steel supply line clip, and the water level is at the verge of being too high for safety’s sake. I show her the simple way to lower the Fluidmaster-type float 1 inch lower and resolve the problem for the long term. Two birds, one stone, one call. She’s a happy camper, I get my paycheck and head for home, returning to the dark, wet stretch of Columbus Parkway. No Bobby McGee, but Bob Dylan sings his song, “Dignity” on my CD player just as well: “Wise man looking at a blade of grass … for Dignity …”

Answer to Syria’s Oppression
Starve the revolutionaries
and maybe they’ll be pleasant,
invite them in to see your gilded pheasant,
but don’t expect them to lie down and die for you.

Gonna take some large cojones,
yours and mine and Bony Marony’s,
to make this world a better place,
overcome the problems of the human race:
sloth and cruelty, ignorance,
greed is just another pestilence —
We’re never gonna relax
and lie down and die for you.
Not ever. Count on it.

Best Time of Day
Best time of day
is when I’m writing poems.
I can’t tell you when
or why it happens,
but it often arrives with
a phrase or title that appears in mind,
and it steeps and brews
for a minute or two or an hour
and then I need to get to paper
or my cell phone in a BIG hurry,
or get up out of bed and
write it down, NOW!
I send it to myself by email via cellphone
or write it on a napkin or scrap of paper
and later set it in type on my hard drive.
I’ve been doing this now
for better than 40 years
and I can’t think
of a better thing to do
except earn an income
to pay our bills.
Poetry is therapeutic,
self-entertaining, and great fun,
but set to its own
independent course of action
it would probably lead
to bankruptcy and/or starvation.
A day job is imperative
if you’re so blessed as to find out
that you’ve been cursed and discover
you’re a perennial poet.

Menadue’s Blues
Jenny Menadue
was my great-grandmother,
on my Dad’s side,
born in Cornwall, England
like so many others.
Made it to the Gold Country
and married Philip Bray,
and put the Menadue name away
for another day.
But research says her Dad
was a Revolutionary War
mercenary soldier,
came down from Canada
to be even bolder,
wrote some columns
for an East Coast paper —
All we have are the ink stains
he left behind,
that’s all we know
of the gene pool he gave us
with the Menadue name
and I wanna know so much more,
wanna know so much more,
got the Menadue’s Blues,
got the Menadue’s Blues …
Wanna know so much more,
got the Menadue’s Blues,
got the Menadue’s Blues …

Writin’ Poems
Rube Goldberg, Nash, and Johnny Cash —
And Diamond, Neil, the way I feel.
And Orson Welles and Sherlock Holmes
and Boots our cat and writin’ poems.
And skies are gray and skies are cold,
and days as these I’m none too bold.
But will there be a better day?
Bet’cher boots, but NOT today.
Today we’ll cancel and go home,
I’d sure be rather writin’ poems.

Peter Bray lives, works and writes in Benicia.

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