Poetry: Standard Plumbing

Stan­dard Plumbing
–Marie Harris
From Weasel in the Turkey Pan

Plumb­ing sup­ply places, like auto parts stores, have long
coun­ters with bar stools for the cus­tomers. When I came in, the
man behind the counter was telling a sto­ry about the time he
and his friends had decid­ed to cel­e­brate get­ting home from
Viet­nam and had bought a lot of Scotch and giv­en one bot­tle to
a wino who drank half of it all at once and dropped dead.
Then the man, with Wal­ter stitched on his shirt, asked what he
could do for me and I told him I had come to buy a toi­let, the
cheap­est, most basic toi­let they had. He want­ed to know if I
was putting it in one of my apart­ments or some­thing and I said
no, it was for my own house and I was, odd­ly enough, buying
a toi­let for the first time because we were installing indoor
plumb­ing. The oth­er hous­es I’d lived in had always come with
toi­lets and I’d nev­er giv­en much thought to choos­ing one,
though today I’d kind of decid­ed I want­ed bone, not white. So,
in the process of get­ting the bowl and the tank and the seat and
some pipes and gas­kets from the ware­house, we got to talking
about our out­hous­es and he allowed as how the one he had in
Flori­da when he was kid in the fifties had­n’t been all that
bad, except for the bugs and some­times a snake, and we both
agreed that there are times out there when you see things from
an unusu­al van­tage, for instance: that view of the night sky in
win­ter is unparalleled.

Cur­rent Mood: 🤔con­tem­pla­tive
Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
Posts created 4259

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Posts

Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

Back To Top