Middle Class Wars

Gasoline holding at well over $2 a gallon, our heating bills now at $300 each month, college expenses rising exponentially faster than inflation—everyone seems to be trying to make their pile by taking part of mine. I’m fighting the battle of the shrinking middle class. But I think I won a little skirmish over the holidays.

Some years ago, our main house drain clogged. Everything that we flushed, rinsed or gargled came back to visit via the basement drain. So after some clean-up, I called Roto Rooter. A young, smallish Hispanic man came to our house. He tried opening the clean-out, but the clay plug was brittle and broke. So with some effort he installed a new one. Then he dragged his machine downstairs, put the clearing hoses into the drain system and flushed everything out. Cost: less than $100. This man didn’t speak English that well, and I was tempted to ask him for his green card, but he did good work.

By the way, after the serviceman left, our dog came down from an upstairs bedroom. He sniffed a few spots, then looked at me as if to say, "Dave, I think there was a stranger here." Doogie is the type of guard dog that prefers to avoid confrontations. He’s the equivalent of the CSI (Crime Scene Investigators) guys on TV, dealing with the evidence after the threat is over. If crooks ever broke into our house, they could be toasting their ill-gotten loot aboard some cruise ship off the coast of Mexico before our dog would crawl out from under the bed to check things out.

Fast forward to this year and our house drain is beginning to gurgle and spurt again. This time I tried Mr. Rooter since they had a big ad and a money-saving coupon on the front cover of my phone book. The next day a rather genteel looking, well fed gentleman with a healthy spray of gray hair arrived. Then he quoted a price about four times what we paid before.

I thought there was a misunderstanding. I just wanted a clean-out; I didn’t want to buy a Mr. Rooter franchise. He mentioned an insurance program that would lessen the cost of future visits, but that was hundreds of dollars extra. I just paid for the clean-out, regretfully, while I wondered how much it would cost to just put a Porta Potty in the backyard. Or in the living room for the winter.

Then around the holidays, the drain started gurgling again. Enough! Nobody was going to put their child through med school, pay off their Lexus, or put in a swimming pool at my expense. I poured a quart of Rooto professional strength cleaner down the basement drain. It worked. And I learned some lessons:

---just because someone looks like he might have snuck across the border doesn’t necessarily make him your enemy.
---if the business you’re using has a big ad on the cover of the Yellow Pages, chances are you’re going to generously help pay for next year’s ad.
---if the repairman looks like he’s old enough to be putting kids through college, you’re going to help do that too.
---dealing with acids, clean-outs, sewage and garbage yourself is preferable to calling for professional help.

At Christmas, maybe my house smelled of pine, baked cookies and sulfuric acid. And maybe I didn’t smell that good myself. But it was a welcome odor for me. It was the smell of a battle won. A victory on behalf of those of us waging the war of the middle class.