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After the vacation There's No Place Like -- Oops!By Rick Horowitz
Understand, I'm not expecting sympathy -- anyone who gets to spend a couple of weeks touring America the Incredibly Beautiful has to count himself one lucky traveler. (Or in our case, two lucky travelers, forever linked by the sacramental bonds of marriage and TripTik.) And to spend those weeks reveling in the snowcapped majesty of the Tetons, thrilling at the bizarre wonders of Yellowstone, gazing in humble silence at the stark splendor of the Badlands... All that, and hot-fudge sundaes at the Dairy Queen? You're right: I've got no cause for complaint. Still... Life on the road can be tiring -- living out of suitcases and duffel bags, moving from motel to campsite, to lodge, to motel, to motel, to motel... Which is why, no matter how much fun a vacation is, it's always nice to get back home. Which is what we finally did the night before last, just ahead of midnight and too tired even to care that the garage light wasn't working; we'd deal with it in the morning. And what a lovely morning it was, sunny and bright, with the morning papers sitting on the front porch just like old times. (The papers, and a curious collection of leaves and twigs.) Plus good news from the garage: The dead bulb wasn't dead at all; it had simply taken advantage of our absence to work itself loose in its socket. A simple twist or two and it was as good as new. Which is more than we could say for the light on the stairway to the basement; it was dead, and it stayed dead. We found a suitable replacement in the kitchen drawer -- no big deal. We were home; what could be nicer than a quick walk through the neighborhood to get back into the pace of the place? I'd no sooner left the house than I saw one of our neighbors driving by, waving a friendly "Welcome back!" More than that, actually -- he pulled to a stop to fill me in on recent news. Something about a major windstorm blowing through the neighborhood while we were gone. Practically a tornado, he said. (That would explain the leaves and the twigs.) Something about major limbs torn from trees. Major limbs crashing onto lawns. Our lawn, for instance. Luckily, we had told him we'd be gone, so when the lumber landed, he went far above and beyond the call of neighborly duty and dragged the stuff to the curb. By the time we got home, the men with the trucks had hauled it all away. I told our neighbor how grateful we were, and we certainly were; without his help, all that wood would have sat on our lawn for days, announcing to any passing burglars that nobody was around, and that our house was easy pickings. We'd have been in serious hot water. Which is more than we could do in our bathtub. Our water heater had gone on the blink. We called the plumber. The plumber had family matters to take care of; he wouldn't be available for days. We called the gas company. (Was it gas we'd smelled in the basement, or simply money going down the drain?) The gas company sent a man right over. The heater's pilot light was out, the gasman confirmed. And the most likely reason it was out, the gasman discovered, was that the heater had sprung a fatal leak somewhere deep inside, and water was dripping onto the pilot light. The heater had shut itself down, so we weren't in danger being asphyxiated or detonated. But we also weren't in danger of being showered or shaved, not until we got a new heater installed. I was willing to wait it out. My travelmate, though, had somehow gotten it into her head that after two weeks on the road, after nearly two days without hot water, she really ought to clean herself off before she went back to her office. I didn't see why. All she had to do, I told her, was show up at her office wearing her brand-new baseball cap with the moose antlers, and nobody would expect her to be clean. My travelmate saw the matter somewhat differently. We spent last night at a motel. There are worse things. Posted 6/18/02. Get
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Rick Horowitz
