Tackroom is full of water, maybe a pipeline broke
That’s how the day started. It’s 7:07 on a cold, icy, windy Martin Luther King Day morning. Minutes later, I step and splash into the tackroom. My instinct is to call someone. Call anyone. Charles, the handiest handyman I know. Annie, she’s good in a crisis. Matt the Plumber, wonder if he’s working today. Gus Brown, who knows a little about plumbing. Dad is always there. Jeeves.
There is something liberating about knowing that the ball is in your hands and there’s no one in the bullpen. I don’t mean there isn’t anyone warming up in the bullpen, I mean, there is no one in the bullpen. There is no bullpen. It’s 7 in the morning, the roads are icy, it’s a holiday.
With no plumbing knowledge, insight, education and certainly no penchant for fixing anything but a broken sentence, I narrowed it down to the splashing-open-faucet noise between the sink and the refrigerator. It’s loud and new. Owning a farm, hell, a house for that matter, you know the noises, they’re comforting in a way, like second cousins, high-school T-shirts.
I don’t know this noise. I open the cabinet doors below the sink and take inventory. It’s dry, that’s good. One pipe going down. One pipe making a right (my right) toward the fridge. Lefty, loosey…Right tighty…I turn the oval knob to the right, two, three, four times and the noise stops, a slow smothering. That’s a good start, I figure. We might be in the ditch but at least the car has stopped spinning.
Now for the damage. There is standing water on the slate floor, glad it’s not wood, the water splashes to the rubber lip of my hiking boots, that’s good, but not over, that’s good.
I pick up a hand-made wooden bench and think of Peter Wilson, who built it, he would like that I saved it first. I hang up three Rambo Rugs, water drips from the top two and flows from the bottom one. I turn on all the lights, the fan in the bathroom, incremental at best. I drop three pairs of Kroops’ boots into the sink, a bucket of ribbons on the counter and the office chair on top of a saddle stand.
I push the water with a broom, like I’m cleaning up a spill in aisle eight at the local grocery store. The water sloshes like a big man got in a little tub and I open the back door, pushing water in ripples and tides onto the concrete stoop. The air bites from the north.
I think about pouring soap into the mix (two birds with one stone?) but decided I don’t need the confusion. I stanchion off the bathroom, cordon off the laundry room and gradually start to win the battle. It doesn’t take long. I look around and the water recedes like a daily tide, the floor is damp but not drenched. I check my phone. 8:47 a.m. My feet are wet.
• Play of the Day. Take a long look at Mizzen Man in the third at Fair Grounds. The son of Mizzen Mast makes his turf debut.
Sean is trying to write every day, for more from the Inside Rail, check out the blog’s main page.
