From the suburbs of Walnut Creek to junior college, UC Berkeley, grad school, to the corporate world. Not a bad evolution. When that formal Odyssey drew to a close, 28 years later in 1994, exiting from San Francisco, I began the next gravel or unpaved road of reality: employers who promised benefits but didn’t deliver, etc. That’s before becoming a self-employed Handyman for the past 15 years. It’s a new series, short-story like, part snarky fiction and colored from the bark of the taller trees of reality:

1. Frozen Okra & Under the Tundra

Somewhere after I left the Big City corporate world in 1994, I found myself in the backwaters of employment dysfunction, the outskirts of civilization where my over-qualified, over-expectant, over-paid, grad-school trained and 36 years of experience could forget itself – learning now how to survive with a new form of Snarkiness, story-spinning to myself to parody the crap I now had to endure daily; learning a new way of coping. This is a re-write of what I wrote in the late 1990s:
“Norcom 4712, this is Peter, First Mate of ‘The Frozen Okra,’ somewhere Under the Tundra, do you read me?”
“Yes, Peter, what do you want?”
“John wants to turn the ship 47 1/2 ˚ to starboard, BUT with No Rush Charges.”
“You tell John to change his deodorant and/or his attitude, WE NO LONGER do Latitude-longitude Triangulations for John or anyone else without Rush Charges. Satellite services to expedite his rusting hulk maneuvering under the tundra are Current Technology, he can either catch up or quit wheedling.”
Suddenly a crackling voice comes over Peter’s ear-implant office microphone: “Peter, are you there, what are you doing?”
“Norcom says ‘No Deal on the Starboard Move without Rush Charges, John’.”
“Did you tell them it was for me?”
“I always do, John.”
“Damn! What are you doing?”
“Hunting for shark, John as per your last Memo, all six pages.”
“Any luck?”
“None, John, torpedo tubes packed with white bean sacks may not be our most efficient way to harvest shark, John.”
“Never mind, try 4 sacks in Tube 8, No, 6 sacks in Tube 4.”
“Sorry, John, I’m outa here, 10-4, Big Buddy, I’ve gone fishing elsewhere!”

2. Lake of Sewage

By 1999 I had reached the bottom of my bottom. It was time to look in the Want Ads: “Plumber Trainee, no experience necessary, we train, must have truck and tools.” How hard could that be? I’d always done my own plumbing on my homes and that of my parents’ home. I applied in Concord, California, and the firm’s name will remain a pleasant mystery. We filled out some preliminary paperwork along with the comment, “Well, you’re certainly over-qualified,” but at this time, it was time for an “Observe.” “You can go out with one of our employees for a few hours, see the kinds of work we do, and if you like it, return and we’ll finish the paperwork.” Sounded fair to me. A younger male, half my age of 56, wearing a company T-shirt with logo on the front and work boots and faded Levi’s entered his tired and battered pickup truck and we drove off to an apartment complex somewhere also in Concord. As we approached our destination…Oh, MY GOD! It’s that kind of work!
The main parking lot was 6” deep, a lake of sewage! Toilet paper and human stools floated everywhere. The driver parked in an adjacent dry parking lot, went in to tell the manager we’d arrived, and I waited. My mentor returned, put on his “ugly gloves,” hauled his 3’ diameter snake and drive motor and toe switch and extension cord from his truck bed and out into the sewage pond. Plugging into power nearby, he located the stopped-up sewer clean-out port in the pavement and fed in his cabled snake. 10 feet, 20 feet, 50 feet, maybe 85 feet later, he hit the clog and the lake surface dropped with a God-awful sucking sound and into and away, like a massive bathtub emptying! I nearly threw up.
I needed this job. We carried on this way for the rest of the morning and I finished filling out my application papers. For the next three years I cleaned sewers, toilets, laundry, shower and bathtub drains, main lines, of roots and obstructions in three counties. Got really good at it, and became a trainer of others.

Peter Bray lives works, and writes in Benicia and has written this column since 2008.

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