Why Every Guy Needs a Handyman
Canadian Don is no hired wrench. He’s my partner, my mentor, the man who taught me how to own a home
By Bob Drury; Art by Andrio Abero/33rpm
The first inkling that I was an unfit homeowner came when the water throughout my house slowed to a trickle. It happened about 7 months after I purchased the place. Because I’d lived in rentals my entire adult life, my default was to call the superintendent. Only now I was the super. Uh-oh. I set upon the only course open to the son of an Irish mother who once broiled a pie: I wished the problem away.
Take a little longer for the kitchen spigot to fill the teapot? No problem, a good cup of Bigelow is well worth the delay. Wait forever for the shower to rinse the shampoo out of my hair? I’d probably look swell with a crewcut or, better yet, a shaved head.
But after slogging through the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past waiting for the toilet bowl to refill, I knew it was finally time to address the problem. So it was that I honored the first rule of holes: When in one, stop digging. I called my long-distance girlfriend, more of an admission of surrender than you might imagine. She changes the oil in her Jeep by herself, installed her own gutter guards, and desquirreled her porch roof. “I guess I need a plumber,” I said.
“I don’t know,” she replied, suppressing a snicker. “Plumbers are awfully expensive, and it may not be anything big.” She pondered. Finally she said, “This won’t be the first time something in the house goes wrong. What you really need is a handyman.”
And this is how Canadian Don entered my life.
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