Winterizing

It was a dark and stormy day. I was at my car, for the reverse commute to Rockaway, at 7:30 A.M., just as a thread of pink appeared in the sky: Red sky at morning, sailors take warning? I was giving up, with some reluctance, the spot I’d regained after being relocated during the shooting of the “Sex and the City” movie on Halloween. (The check from the production company arrived, by the way, covering the cost of the parking tickets.) Something by Schubert, the overture to an unfinished opera called “Der Teufel als Hydraulicus,” was on the radio. “Devil in the Waterworks”? I was on my way to meet the plumber and turn off the water for the winter, and I hoped this was not a bad omen.

My list of things to do got longer the closer I got to Rockaway. The plumber wasn’t coming till one, so I had all morning to lay the ground for him. The sky over Jamaica Bay was one big platter of dark cloud with a pale rim all the way around it. I bustled around, doing dishes while I still had water, putting the recycling out for the garbagemen—last chance before spring—emptying out the refrigerator and defrosting the freezer (I learned years ago that it’s easier to let the ice melt, helping it along with a pan of boiling-hot water, than it is to hack at it with a butter knife). I plugged in the electric radiator to take the chill off the place, and I used the toilet whenever I felt the slightest call, because once the water is off and antifreeze is in the lines, the nearest facilities are at McDonald’s.

One urgent job was to do something with the tank of leftover gasoline from the boat. It’s shameful that I didn’t use it up puttering around on Jamaica Bay, but at least I never ran out of gas. My idea was to pour the gas into my car’s tank, but I didn’t have a funnel, much less one with a wide mouth or anyone to hold it in place for me while I hefted the three-gallon tank. Brainstorm: Get in the car and drive to the mechanic and ask nicely if someone will help you. The mechanic had a funnel, and in the trunk I had one of my homemade bailers—an empty bleach bottle with the cap still on and the bottom sawn off. So I held the bleach bottle, with the cap off, upside down over the funnel, and the mechanic tilted the tank very carefully and poured the gasoline into the car. We hardly wasted a drop.

Home again, I snuck out to the boardwalk for a walk before the rain set in, and had lunch and read the Wave (a great column by my favorite columnist, Dorothy Dunne). At twelve-thirty, I began preparing in earnest for my date with the plumber. I found the key-on-a-stick—the fitting used to turn the valve underground and cut off the water to the house—and pried the cap off the access-line pipe outside with the claw of a hammer. I bushwhacked my way between the bungalows (lots of new vines have established themselves) and moved aside the latticework so the plumber could get under the house to unscrew the two plugs in the water line. It was raining steadily now, and the ground was slippery with wet leaves. I brought the hose inside for draining the hot-water tanks, and filled a bucket with hot soapy water and a few big pots with cold water and a dishpan with lukewarm water. I filled the sprinkling can, too, in the hope that I will still get around to planting tulip bulbs.

I remembered the five-inch red plug for the waste line and found it under the kitchen sink, wrapped reverently in a white paper towel. In there, too, was a gallon of antifreeze: got that out. Cleared the floor around the toilets and took the lids off. (Used the toilet again, while I was at it.) By one, I had everything in order. And the plumber didn’t come.

There was still plenty to do to fill the time. I finished defrosting the freezer, and packed some things to take back to the city. I drained and packed my bong, a sure sign that summer is over. I had already swept up around the toilets, but I went back in and scrubbed them with cleanser, which was an afterthought but a good one. (And, as long as I was in there, I used my nice clean toilet.) There was no point in mopping yet, because the plumber would be tromping around in wet boots—that is, if he came. Every once in a while I’d open the porch door and stare down the walk to the street. I kept telling myself that there was nothing to worry about. The wind was howling and the rain was pouring down, but surely plumbers have gotten wet in the rain before, and Jimmy has never let me down.

I thought of trying to get started myself—go and probe underground with the key-on-a-stick to see if I could turn the water off (allow forty minutes) and start draining the hot-water tanks. But if the plumber wasn’t going to show up I might just as well leave the water on. I like to stretch the season, till Thanksgiving, if possible. I watch the weather page of the Times, which features a little diagram showing how low the temperature is likely to sink each night for the next week, as well as the actual temperature range for the few days past. It had hit freezing the weekend before, when I was out of town, which was not in the forecast, and this gave me a scare. But often after that first freeze the temperature goes up again. I am a great believer in Indian summer.

I had just run out of things to do and put on some water for tea when Jimmy called my name from the front door. Whew! He was forty minutes late, but he was here. He was wearing a yellow slicker and carrying a bucket full of tools and his compressor, which looks like a gigantic oil can with a pump, a hose, and a pedal. He had an assistant named Gary, who brought in an electric pump to speed up the process of draining the hot-water tanks.

While Gary emptied the tanks and the toilets, Jimmy and I went outside to turn the water off. He got it on the first try. He removed the showerheads and handed them to me to take inside. He went out to the truck and got some cardboard to slide under the house. “I'm out of the rain once I’m under the house,” he said gamely, and wiggled under the bungalow to take out the plugs. "Do you remember that there are two?" I asked. He did. I stood by like an operating-room nurse to receive the plugs and put them in the silverware drawer till next year. Inside, Jimmy warmed his hands on the electric radiator, and then pumped the air out of the faucets in the kitchen sink. He attaches the hose on his compressor to the faucet, pumps the big oil-can thing full of air, then steps on the pedal to release the air into the pipe, forcing out any standing water. I had neglected to clear my toiletries out of the outdoor shower, so I did that before Jimmy brought the compressor outside and blew out the line to the shower. I was beginning to feel fantastic. Much as I hate to see the season end, having the bungalow’s pipes blown out is like having my own lines purged of anxiety.

I asked the plumber when he was going to Florida. He’s leaving next week on a two-week tour of China. It will be his third time there. I emboldened myself to ask him if his family was from China. (Jimmy looks Chinese but his speech is pure Bronx.) “My parents,” he said. “They were from Canton.” He pronounced it “Can-TAWN,” and for the first time I made the unlikely connection of Chinese food with Canton, Ohio, home of the Professional Football Hall of Fame. Then he is coming back for a month, to do his heating projects, and will go to Florida in early January. He usually returns to Rockaway around Mother’s Day, the hardest day of the year to find a plumber.

“This is about the last chance,” Jimmy said as we went about winterizing. I kept trying to focus on the main thing I didn’t want to forget: put that plug in the waste line. This involves sliding back a neoprene sleeve, like a tourniquet, on the pipe where it has been cut to allow insertion of a big red plug, which keeps sewage from backing up into the house in case there's a problem over the winter. My first mentor in the world of bungalow plumbing questioned the necessity for this step, but it has always seemed like a good idea to me. (He also told me that I could use the toilet in the winter if I flushed with antifreeze.) Gary was outside now helping, too. Jimmy got the plug in, then poured the last of the antifreeze into the trap, and we were done.

“What do I owe you?” I asked Jimmy.
“Same as last year,” he said. “I don’t remember.”
I didn’t remember exactly, either, but I believe he charged $75 for each side. I budgeted $200 for plumbing, so I gave him the whole amount, which he said was very generous. I don’t know what the etiquette is, but ever since the first year, when I failed to tip Jimmy and his assistant, a guy named Paulie, who really did not like going under the house (I repented later and sent a check), I always tip the plumber. He may be the only man in the world who has the know-how and the equipment to satisfy me completely.

We wished each other a Happy Thanksgiving and a good trip to China and a good winter, and Jimmy gathered his bucket of tools and his compressor, and told Gary that I’d given him a little something, and we shook hands, and they left.

Now it was time to mop the floor and lock up. I started at one end, gathering everything I needed from each room as I went along, turning the lights off, leaving the refrigerator door open, piling bags, sweater, jacket, and finally keys and purse on the porch. I emptied the slops into the drain on the street, and carried a carton of orange juice salvaged from the refrigerator over to my friend the Catwoman, who gave me a cup of coffee. Then I headed back to Manhattan.

It had finally stopped raining, but that platter of cloud was still hovering over Jamaica Bay; at the western edge the sun dropped under the rim, spreading golden light into a long slit at the horizon. It was rush hour, but, again, I was going against traffic. I can’t remember when I’ve tried to park at rush hour. It seemed possible: people who are crazy enough to drive to work and park on the street would be leaving. But then again people who are crazy enough to reverse-commute by car would be out cruising. My favorite street was parked up solid. So was the street where the violence had broken out. I knew there would be nothing on my street, because of the car-rental agency on the only block where it’s legal to park during the day, but I drove the length of it anyway, and turned left at the end, ready for a twenty-six-block tour of the city, in search of a Monday-Thursday spot. I realized just after turning that the spot at the corner, which I had just passed up, was legal: I backed up. I fit. It was too good to be true. I got out and looked at the sign: It really did say Monday-Thursday, and though there was a No Parking sign with an arrow, I was on the right side of the arrow. I checked to see if the car ahead of me had enough room to get out if I pulled up snug, and it did.

Ah. Now it can get cold.

When in Rockaway

Unfortunately, there are many summer activities in Rockaway that exclude me and from which I am exempt, thank God. For instance, I need not participate in, or even observe, the Bikini Contest, which takes place on a Wednesday night in August at Connolly’s, the best bar in the world, and is for many on the peninsula, including my neighbor D., the highlight of the season. There is also something called Hat Night, on Labor Day weekend. It’s basically a pub crawl that ends with a prize for the best hat and sometimes, if you’re young and restless, a new tattoo. And now there is Mustache Night, which is basically another pub crawl but on bicycles—from Connolly’s to the Lobster House, to the Tap & Grill, the Irish Circle, Blackwater’s, the Wharf, Jameson’s, and Harbor Light—with a prize for the best mustache. D. says he’d skip Jameson’s.

But I am not exempt from Friday nights. Last Friday, I met my neighbor the Catwoman and her husband, the master plumber, and D. at the Tap & Grill, a clam bar better known among the locals under its earlier incarnation as Boggiano’s, or “the old men’s bar.” I had Manhattan clam chowder and crab cakes. And a beer. And another beer. Then two seltzers with lime. (I was trying to pace myself.) And another beer. The bartender, a young woman who is also a neighbor, comes from a family of publicans. We were there partly because of her and partly because a band called the Loan Sharks was playing, and someone had heard that they were good. But the master plumber didn’t like the band (I think it was rockabilly; at any rate, there was a guy with a deep voice and a black cowboy hat), so after a while we went to Connolly’s, where everyone really wanted to go anyway.

Connolly’s is on the ground floor of a huge old gray-painted house, with a burgundy awning over the entrance and benches outside and glossy dark-wood booths and a dartboard, and Guinness on tap, and the cider that locals drink with ice. The owners live upstairs, and if you are really, really lucky, and come in with the Catwoman and the master plumber and D., who serves as bouncer on the night of the Bikini Contest, you might find your way behind the bar to the stairs leading to a very low door that you bang your head against (but only once) on the way to the garden. Connolly’s, which is open only from Memorial Day to Labor Day, gets really crowded late at night with lifeguards and surfers—beautiful people with deep tans and white teeth—so it’s best to get there early and be home in bed before the toilet breaks in the ladies’ room and the owner calls for the master plumber. (That night, only the sink stopped up.) When it was time to go, along about midnight, one of the four of us had to use the bathroom and the others had to wait, and by the time he or she came out, someone else had to go, and we had to wait again, and it was 2 A.M. and the place was jammed before we finally got out of there.

D. wanted to take the boardwalk—it was a beautiful night, with a waning moon—but C. set off up the Boulevard at a march, and I kept up with her, because we both had to go to the bathroom. We tried not to laugh when the master plumber, trailing us by half a block, suggested we stop at the Tap & Grill. We were going past a low row of attached bungalows next to the deli, and trying to be quiet and not attract any attention, because people were still sitting out on their porches, when a voice on one of the porches said “Hello” into a cell phone, and the master plumber said, “Uh-oh,” and —maybe you had to be there—we all cracked up. I leaned against the wall of the deli laughing. The master plumber stood in the middle of the road laughing. C. continued up the street laughing. I made it home and laughed myself to sleep and started laughing again the next morning when C. turned up outside my porch door to see if I was all right.

I was fine. I’d had two cranberry juice cocktails and one pint of Guinness at Connolly’s. But I can’t do this every Friday. At least, I don't think I can.

Hallelujah Chorus

(Low-key secular version)

On Saturday, the day before Easter, I finished getting my figures together for my income-tax return, got in the car, and delivered the package to my accountant in Astoria, who later said that he thought we’d make the deadline. Hallelujah! This is no small triumph, as once you’ve filed an extension, as I did for the past two years, it’s hard to make the deadline ever again.

Then I got on the Grand Central Parkway and drove out to Far Rockaway Auto Glass to have my cracked windshield replaced. I got there just before three o’clock, with all the necessary documentation from my insurance company. Turns out I have something called a glass waiver, so not only was I covered for a windshield cracked by an act of God but there was no deductible. Hallelujah! God is good, and so is Geico. It’s the first time I’ve ever benefitted from having car insurance.

I was a little bit curious about how they go about replacing a windshield (I trust it does not involve the use of a sledgehammer); mostly I wondered how they get the registration and inspection stickers off the old windshield to paste on the new one (steam?). But I got the feeling that the autoglaziers wanted to work without my supervision. “Come back in an hour,” the boss said.

I still had the Google map I’d printed out the last time I visited Far Rockaway Auto Glass, when my car was vandalized. (It didn’t occur to me to call the insurance company that time. I labor under the impression that whenever you use the insurance, they raise the price.) The last time, I walked straight to the ocean, and saw some swans in the inlet at East Rockaway and talked to some fishermen. This time I was leaning in the other direction, toward Jamaica Bay, but I needed a destination. There on the map was Gipson Street, where my plumber lives. I had ridden out to his house on my bicycle once last summer. And beyond Gipson was a street called Granada Place, with its evocation of the Alhambra, and a nearby street called Sunnyside, which was the name of Washington Irving’s cottage in Tarrytown. I set off.

The plumber, Jimmy, looks Oriental but talks like he’s from the Bronx. He spends the winter in Florida. His house is a narrow two-story white stucco house squeezed in among other houses on a street that ends at the bay. I started stalking him last summer, just to see how he lived. If he had an ostentatious villa with a swimming pool, I would know he was overcharging me. But his house is modest, and in season (plumbing season, that is—Jimmy’s and my plumbing season) his driveway is lined with the vans and cars of someone who runs a plumbing business out of his home.

Gipson Street ends at a basin of Jamaica Bay that features a cement plant to the east and a Keyspan power plant to the west. Low-flying planes were coming in for a landing at Kennedy Airport. On the shore among the flattened spongy reeds was an orange upholstered loveseat. The Manhattan skyline is in the distance. I tried to hug the bay as I went west, up and down the prongs in the fork of streets, but KeySpan, which delivers natural gas to Long Island, makes a big chunk of the waterfront inaccessible.

I went back down to Mott Avenue and trotted over to Sunnyside. There was a big gracious house on the corner, the kind of place I was glad my plumber didn’t live in. I was just going past it to find the turn onto Granada Place when my cell phone rang: Far Rockaway Auto Glass calling, to say my car was ready. It was twenty to four, and I knew the autoglaziers were eager to close the shop and go home, so I decided to save Far Rockaway's Granada for another day (chances are it would have been a letdown) and found the most direct route back to the garage on Nameoke Avenue.

One of the men was just parking my car on the street when I arrived. It had orange tape holding the beautiful new windshield in place; the registration and inspection stickers had survived the operation. I signed a form for the boss, and asked him when to take the tape off (tomorrow) and how the street’s name was pronounced. (Gipson, I figured out, does not have a hard G, like Gibson, but a soft G, like Gypsy.) Nameoke could be a stately two syllables like Holm Oak, or it could rhyme with Mammy Okie. “Nammy Oke,” he said, solving for me one of the mysteries of Queens. Hallelujah.

Back in Manhattan, I found a spot, with no cruising time at all, on my second-favorite parking block. Hallelujah! Easter Sunday was very peaceful. I steered clear of the Episcopalians, and was tempted to go outside only when it snowed a few absurd large flakes in the sunshine. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Alternate-side parking was suspended Monday and Tuesday for Passover, so I don’t have to worry about the car till Thursday, and then only for a half hour between seven-thirty and eight in the morning. Hah-LAAAY-LOOOO-yah.