CREEK ROAD GANG
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Pipe Dreams
Kate Lydoncopyright 2010
When I was eleven, my parents made their first and only real estate purchase in Winthrop, Massachusetts. The house was on a short, narrow side street off Shore Drive, which ran along the beach. For the first time in my life, we had both a first and second floor, in addition to the cellar. It was a small house with a big side porch, and even a second floor porch off the room that became my bedroom., and I could watch the sunrise over the ocean from my window.
The house was about a hundred years old, and its design reflected its past as a summer cottage. Through the front door, we entered a small room we called the sunroom, which had at some time been converted from a front porch into a room which housed our upright piano, some bookcases, and a coat rack. The sunroom opened onto the living room, with lots of windows, beams on the ceiling, an old brick fireplace and a stairway to the second floor. In back of the living room was a bright kitchen with a free-standing stove, behind which was a small unheated room we called "the back hall." Off the kitchen on the right was an add-on which had once been a dining room, but which became my parents' bedroom. Upstairs were two bedrooms, one of which was certainly not part of the original house, and also a loft area. All five of us kids slept upstairs.
In the whole house, there were only three closets: one tiny one each in the two upstairs bedrooms, and a long, narrow space that ran behind the fireplace, which we charitably referred to as the hall closet. Years later my brother Joey would install a powder room there, but early on, it was mostly a small area of wasted space, home only to the unopened bottles of Metaxa my father's boss gave him for Christmas every year.
One of the most interesting features of the house involved the bathroom. Whenever they had installed plumbing in the house, there hadn't been room on the second floor to get both the bathtub and the toilet on the same side of the chimney. As a result, they split the bathroom into two rooms. On the forward side of the chimney, one small room, which we called the bath-bathroom, contained only a bathtub and a radiator. On the rear side of the chimney was what we called the toilet-bathroom, a tiny room containing only a toilet and a sink, and with a sloping ceiling. Years later, one of the ushers at my wedding, a strapping six-footer, asked my husband how the heck my father and brothers ever managed to use that toilet while standing; the only way he could manage was to bend over backwards. (Clearly he had not paid much attention to the average height of the males in my family.)
Whatever the discomfort to tall people, the existence of two separate rooms gave our family an easier time of managing the needs of seven of us in a house with the combined plumbing fixtures of one full bathroom. But there was one other interesting feature of the chimney/bathroom arrangement. I don't know under what circumstances he made the discovery, but somehow my brother John, next oldest to me, learned that if he crept into that closet behind the fireplace and made a noise, the sound carried over the pipes that ran to the second floor, giving the impression that the noise was occurring in the toilet-bathroom upstairs.
John decided to put this knowledge to use shortly after our youngest brother Joey was reliably toilet-trained. One day, after waiting until Joey had closed the bathroom door behind him, John hightailed it into the closet behind the fireplace.
"Joey!" he cried.
Poor little Joey, alone in the tiny bathroom, and proudly using the toilet all by himself, was mystified. "John?" he asked.
"Where are you?"
"I fell down the toilet!" John said.
"I can't see you, John!"
"You can't see me because I'm right around that bend in the toilet," John said. "I tried to climb up, but I can't get out!"
Joey was horrified! "What should I do, John?"
"Whatever you do, Joey, don't flush the toilet!" John warned.
"I'll get Mum!" Joey shouted.
"No, she'll get mad," John said. "Listen, Joey, go get a rope!"
"A rope?"
"Like a jump rope!" John suggested. "Then you can lower it into the toilet and I'll grab it and climb out!"
"O.K., John," Joey said. "I'll get it!"
"Hurry!" John added. "I can hardly hold on."
Joey flew out of the bathroom, shouting at the top of his lungs: "I need a rope! John fell down the toilet!"
Our mother, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, glanced up from her book. "If you have a problem, come down here and tell me about it," she said. "Don't yell from upstairs."
As he rushed downstairs, Joey was beginning to cry. "I need a rope!"
At that point, John emerged from the closet, doubled over with laughter.
"John!" Joey said. "You're safe! You got out of the toilet!"
Despite many attempts to explain, poor little Joey just couldn't understand what had really happened, and for quite some time believed that John, who couldn't wait for the rope, had somehow climbed out of a pipe and landed behind the fireplace.
Many years later, when Joey was in his late teens, John and I had both moved out. Joey was still living with our parents, and not only did we all come home for Thanksgiving, but one particular year, Papa and Eva came up from Maryland too. As usual, prior to her father visiting, my mother had spent ages cooking and cleaning and getting everything just right. The timing of the visit by Papa and Eva was close to perfect, because the living room had just been redone. There were new built-in shelves, fresh paint on the woodwork, and a new red braided rug on the gleaming hardwood floor. Mum was happy to show off her brand-new wallpaper in the living room – a colorful and very pretty provincial print on a white background. Everything looked beautiful, and the Thanksgiving dinner she prepared was delicious. Well, to be truthful, my father was disgruntled about the pumpkin chiffon pie Eva had made and brought up from Maryland. "It doesn't even taste like pumpkin," he told me. But he didn't say a word against it in Eva's presence, so everything seemed like the proverbial warm and comfy, happy family holiday gathering.
Shortly after dinner, someone went upstairs to use the bathroom; I can't remember who, and it probably doesn't matter, but it wasn't me. In a fit of inspiration, Joey had decided to re-enact the "fell down the toilet/get a rope" routine. He rushed into the space behind the fireplace. Not trusting the acoustics, he climbed up on the pipes to position himself closer to the ceiling, and called out, "Don't flush the toilet!"
As I said some time back, this was an old house, and it also had old pipes, one of which promptly broke. Water spurted up by the ceiling and over the back of the fireplace as Joey ran from the closet shouting, "We have to shut off the water!"
"What is it?" my mother asked.
"A pipe broke," Joey said.
"For heaven's sake!" Eva said.
"A pipe?" Papa asked. "Damn strange!"
"My wallpaper!" my mother wailed. "My new wallpaper!"
I glanced at the ceiling in the living room over the fireplace, just where the wallpaper and the ceiling met. The first drip was forming, but my mother was too busy crying to notice. Dashing to the kitchen, I grabbed a dishtowel, then pulled a kitchen chair into the living room and climbed onto it. My mother had collapsed in tears onto the couch. "It's all right, Mum," I told her, as I held the dish towel over the wallpaper near the ceiling's edge.
" Someone call a plumber!" my father yelled, as he and Joey headed to the cellar to find the valve to turn off the water. " For crying out loud!"
"My wallpaper isn't getting wet, is it?" my mother asked.
"No," I lied as I held the dish towel in place.
"That's one good thing," my mother said. "But why are you holding that towel up there?"
"This is just preventative," I claimed.
Papa raised his eyebrows, but, for once, didn't argue.
"Get me a bigger towel," I hissed to a passing brother.
After much commotion, the water was turned off, the plumber was called, a larger towel was obtained, and all leaking and dripping decreased and finally stopped, even before I had lost all feeling in my upraised arm. Unfortunately, no one, not even my mother, who doesn't take "no" for an answer, was able to persuade a plumber to leave the bosom of his family on Thanksgiving night to tend to our pipes. "I'll be there in the morning," the plumber had said. "Just leave the water off in the meantime." Not wanting to trouble the neighbors or give fuel to any extant rumors about the crazy Lydon family, we all piled into cars before retiring that evening and drove to a local gas station to use their rest rooms.
The plumber appeared as promised the next morning and put some shiny new copper piping into the closet behind the fireplace. Everything dried out, with not even the slightest stain marring the new wallpaper, and no one in the family ever again pretended to have fallen down the toilet.
The house was about a hundred years old, and its design reflected its past as a summer cottage. Through the front door, we entered a small room we called the sunroom, which had at some time been converted from a front porch into a room which housed our upright piano, some bookcases, and a coat rack. The sunroom opened onto the living room, with lots of windows, beams on the ceiling, an old brick fireplace and a stairway to the second floor. In back of the living room was a bright kitchen with a free-standing stove, behind which was a small unheated room we called "the back hall." Off the kitchen on the right was an add-on which had once been a dining room, but which became my parents' bedroom. Upstairs were two bedrooms, one of which was certainly not part of the original house, and also a loft area. All five of us kids slept upstairs.
In the whole house, there were only three closets: one tiny one each in the two upstairs bedrooms, and a long, narrow space that ran behind the fireplace, which we charitably referred to as the hall closet. Years later my brother Joey would install a powder room there, but early on, it was mostly a small area of wasted space, home only to the unopened bottles of Metaxa my father's boss gave him for Christmas every year.
One of the most interesting features of the house involved the bathroom. Whenever they had installed plumbing in the house, there hadn't been room on the second floor to get both the bathtub and the toilet on the same side of the chimney. As a result, they split the bathroom into two rooms. On the forward side of the chimney, one small room, which we called the bath-bathroom, contained only a bathtub and a radiator. On the rear side of the chimney was what we called the toilet-bathroom, a tiny room containing only a toilet and a sink, and with a sloping ceiling. Years later, one of the ushers at my wedding, a strapping six-footer, asked my husband how the heck my father and brothers ever managed to use that toilet while standing; the only way he could manage was to bend over backwards. (Clearly he had not paid much attention to the average height of the males in my family.)
Whatever the discomfort to tall people, the existence of two separate rooms gave our family an easier time of managing the needs of seven of us in a house with the combined plumbing fixtures of one full bathroom. But there was one other interesting feature of the chimney/bathroom arrangement. I don't know under what circumstances he made the discovery, but somehow my brother John, next oldest to me, learned that if he crept into that closet behind the fireplace and made a noise, the sound carried over the pipes that ran to the second floor, giving the impression that the noise was occurring in the toilet-bathroom upstairs.
John decided to put this knowledge to use shortly after our youngest brother Joey was reliably toilet-trained. One day, after waiting until Joey had closed the bathroom door behind him, John hightailed it into the closet behind the fireplace.
"Joey!" he cried.
Poor little Joey, alone in the tiny bathroom, and proudly using the toilet all by himself, was mystified. "John?" he asked.
"Where are you?"
"I fell down the toilet!" John said.
"I can't see you, John!"
"You can't see me because I'm right around that bend in the toilet," John said. "I tried to climb up, but I can't get out!"
Joey was horrified! "What should I do, John?"
"Whatever you do, Joey, don't flush the toilet!" John warned.
"I'll get Mum!" Joey shouted.
"No, she'll get mad," John said. "Listen, Joey, go get a rope!"
"A rope?"
"Like a jump rope!" John suggested. "Then you can lower it into the toilet and I'll grab it and climb out!"
"O.K., John," Joey said. "I'll get it!"
"Hurry!" John added. "I can hardly hold on."
Joey flew out of the bathroom, shouting at the top of his lungs: "I need a rope! John fell down the toilet!"
Our mother, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, glanced up from her book. "If you have a problem, come down here and tell me about it," she said. "Don't yell from upstairs."
As he rushed downstairs, Joey was beginning to cry. "I need a rope!"
At that point, John emerged from the closet, doubled over with laughter.
"John!" Joey said. "You're safe! You got out of the toilet!"
Despite many attempts to explain, poor little Joey just couldn't understand what had really happened, and for quite some time believed that John, who couldn't wait for the rope, had somehow climbed out of a pipe and landed behind the fireplace.
Many years later, when Joey was in his late teens, John and I had both moved out. Joey was still living with our parents, and not only did we all come home for Thanksgiving, but one particular year, Papa and Eva came up from Maryland too. As usual, prior to her father visiting, my mother had spent ages cooking and cleaning and getting everything just right. The timing of the visit by Papa and Eva was close to perfect, because the living room had just been redone. There were new built-in shelves, fresh paint on the woodwork, and a new red braided rug on the gleaming hardwood floor. Mum was happy to show off her brand-new wallpaper in the living room – a colorful and very pretty provincial print on a white background. Everything looked beautiful, and the Thanksgiving dinner she prepared was delicious. Well, to be truthful, my father was disgruntled about the pumpkin chiffon pie Eva had made and brought up from Maryland. "It doesn't even taste like pumpkin," he told me. But he didn't say a word against it in Eva's presence, so everything seemed like the proverbial warm and comfy, happy family holiday gathering.
Shortly after dinner, someone went upstairs to use the bathroom; I can't remember who, and it probably doesn't matter, but it wasn't me. In a fit of inspiration, Joey had decided to re-enact the "fell down the toilet/get a rope" routine. He rushed into the space behind the fireplace. Not trusting the acoustics, he climbed up on the pipes to position himself closer to the ceiling, and called out, "Don't flush the toilet!"
As I said some time back, this was an old house, and it also had old pipes, one of which promptly broke. Water spurted up by the ceiling and over the back of the fireplace as Joey ran from the closet shouting, "We have to shut off the water!"
"What is it?" my mother asked.
"A pipe broke," Joey said.
"For heaven's sake!" Eva said.
"A pipe?" Papa asked. "Damn strange!"
"My wallpaper!" my mother wailed. "My new wallpaper!"
I glanced at the ceiling in the living room over the fireplace, just where the wallpaper and the ceiling met. The first drip was forming, but my mother was too busy crying to notice. Dashing to the kitchen, I grabbed a dishtowel, then pulled a kitchen chair into the living room and climbed onto it. My mother had collapsed in tears onto the couch. "It's all right, Mum," I told her, as I held the dish towel over the wallpaper near the ceiling's edge.
" Someone call a plumber!" my father yelled, as he and Joey headed to the cellar to find the valve to turn off the water. " For crying out loud!"
"My wallpaper isn't getting wet, is it?" my mother asked.
"No," I lied as I held the dish towel in place.
"That's one good thing," my mother said. "But why are you holding that towel up there?"
"This is just preventative," I claimed.
Papa raised his eyebrows, but, for once, didn't argue.
"Get me a bigger towel," I hissed to a passing brother.
After much commotion, the water was turned off, the plumber was called, a larger towel was obtained, and all leaking and dripping decreased and finally stopped, even before I had lost all feeling in my upraised arm. Unfortunately, no one, not even my mother, who doesn't take "no" for an answer, was able to persuade a plumber to leave the bosom of his family on Thanksgiving night to tend to our pipes. "I'll be there in the morning," the plumber had said. "Just leave the water off in the meantime." Not wanting to trouble the neighbors or give fuel to any extant rumors about the crazy Lydon family, we all piled into cars before retiring that evening and drove to a local gas station to use their rest rooms.
The plumber appeared as promised the next morning and put some shiny new copper piping into the closet behind the fireplace. Everything dried out, with not even the slightest stain marring the new wallpaper, and no one in the family ever again pretended to have fallen down the toilet.
* * *
Biographical Note:
Kate Lydon is a storyteller, writer and editor who also hires out as an
adjunct professor. She grew up along the rocky coast of Massachusetts,
but has lived most of her life amid the trees of Pennsylvania.
Daughter of a man who made the best donuts in the world and a woman who
acted out Macbeth and read poetry for her children, Kate is the oldest
of five, and thus is prone to giving advice. However, her husband, two
children, two cats and one dog, independent souls all, pay scant
attention, and so she writes. Kate’s
satirical murder mystery, Off
Center, is now available through Amazon’s Kindle Store. She is currently working on another novel, as well as a book of stories about visiting her grandparents Papa and Eva, whose shared hobby was arguing. Several Papa and Eva stories have been published here. See "Visiting Papa and Eva" in the September 2009 issue, "Melon, Coffee and Coke" from the October 2009 issue, "Riding in the Car" from the December 2009 issue, and "Lessons in Psychology" from the January 2010 issue. See also Kate's story "You Don't Mean It, Dear!" in the November 2009 issue.
