See, here's the thing about gin (The. Devil's. Drink, you know). Alcohol is a poison--the Temperance Unions were right about that--but it's got a really long, shallow dose-response curve. Which means: sure, it'll kill you, but you've got to drink an insane amount before you die of alcohol toxicity, and it would help if you've been locked in the trunk of a car and are the sort of person who really needs to belong to a fraternity. This is in contrast to something like nicotine, which will kill you dead at 40-60mg, or the venom of the Australian taipan snake, a mere 2.3mg of which will throw an average-sized man off the mortal coil and onto his ass right quick.
Then there's Juniperus communis, the common juniper, the "berries" of which some twisted deviant decided to toss into the distillery along with a hodegpodge of other herbs, thus creating gin (he, in turn, got this idea from a demented Frenchman, Count de Morret, who developed juniper wine in the 15th century). Juniper "berries" are actually the cones of this particular species of evergreen, and in accordance with rumor they are indeed poisonous, but all you'll get from eating a bunch them is a raging case of diarrhea and a boot to the head for being an idiot.
That being said I have found that gin, unlike the other clear spirits, produces a cold and camphor-like sensation in addition to its potent, head-muddling inebriative qualities. This is a uniquely deep, aromatic drunkenness which can lead to near-total anesthesia, tattoos, and sticking pins into your scalp.
I, of course, have no tattoos. But you see my point.
Or do you? This is actually supposed to be about plumbing.
The future is, indeed, plastics. It certainly isn't lumpen, corroded, multi-ton lengths of cast iron. Once again, plans for turning Peapod Manor into, well, a manor have been somewhat delayed by the need to have bourgeois things like working toilets and the luxury of taking showers without standing ankle-deep in soapy effluvia. And so, we spent a couple of days this weekend with Ed the Plumber, who removed the aforementioned lumpen iron and replaced it with many lengths of shiny black ABS plastic pipe, all chemically welded together into a functional, properly-inclined arrangement. It is the Darth Vader of drain systems.
During the course of this operation, the spirit of Bucky was ever-present, although--technically--the poor arrangement of the cast-iron drains was the fault of the original builder of the house (who, as I understand it, is 85 and lives the next town over...if he were, say, 75, I'd find him and berate him). But it was Bucky who elected to live for 20 years with a back-inclined tub drain--leading to the previously mentioned effluvia footbath--which led to a completely blocked roof vent, which was in turn the cause of the expensive problem alluded to here shortly after we moved in.
During the course of spending time with Ed talking about plumbing and What's Wrong With Liberals and Why Bucky Needs A Beating, I happened to glance up into a sheltered nook in the basement beams. I saw the butt-end of a plastic soda bottle tucked away up there. So I pulled the plastic bottle down--and discovered a homemade bong. You know, the kind you make with the barrel of a Bic pen and a soda bottle, with a bit of brass plumbing if you've got it, or some artfully arranged tinfoil if you don't, all sealed up with electrical tape, and then eventually you realize that when you're pulling hard on it you're actually burning the plastic of the Bic and inhaling toxic gasses...?
Maybe you don't know.
Anyway, it was one of those. So, the list of Things Bucky Left Behind now includes: one porn tape ("Midnight Snatch," tucked away above the inside of the bathroom closet doorframe), a beer can and an empty pack of cigarettes (both found in the duct housing when I replaced the furnace filter), and one homemade bong. Not to mention the holes in the wall, the rotted floorboards, the shoddy roof repairs, the half-assed home improvement projects, and so forth.
Which, I suppose, brings me back to The Devil's Drink. The day of the closing, we went to the house for the first time, with our freshly-mortgaged keys, and within half an hour a van from the local telephone company showed up. The repairman said that there was a problem with our lines, which we were very impressed by, because we hadn't even been in the house long enough to unpack a phone. The cause of the phone trouble? The "self-wired" lines in the house were a tangled, shorted-out web of telephone wire, speaker cable, and wet string. In the course of welcoming us to town, the telephone man told us a bit about the prior owners. "That guy," he said, "spilled more beer in a day than most people drink in a week."
Uh-huh.
As it turns out, that simple fact would explain alot about the state of Peapod Manor. I can just imagine...over the course of twenty years, so many projects were begun, and then the day just wore on...Eh...it's too hot today.
Fortunately, Bucky is alive and well somewhere in Florida with his motorcycle. If he were dead, I'd be worrying about some Stephen King-style situation where I inexplicably quit my job and go to work as a heavy-equipment operator, then buy a Harley and start smoking Marlboros and leaving empty beer cans in the heating ducts.
