Once Upon a Time: True Stories of an Aspiring Writer

15: A Ragtag Band of Plumbers (or, How I Spent My Summer, 2007)

Welcome back to fictional school. I am your teacher, Miss Edexistence, for the year of 2007-2008. Your first assignment will be to sharpen your writing skills by writing about what you did this summer, just like what every other fictional teacher assigns. Be creative and enjoy. 

In this summer of 2007 we went on vacation, my dad started a band, and we found a new inside joke at the same time.

See, we used to vacation at the Jersey Shore for a week where my mom grew up. It was tons of fun: playing in high tides, going to the boardwalk, playing the spider stomping game at the arcade, and going to the fireman's fair.

One year that changed. We were looking for more from our vacation, so we started going to Cape Cod instead. That too became a good tradition, and eventually I liked it just as much. Going to the beaches, swimming in the bay, and shopping all became favorite pastimes there.

Years later, we were used to the routine. The problem? The house usually wasn't open for us until Saturday morning. And if you tried to cross the Cape Cod Canal on a Saturday afternoon, you'd be there all day. So, we'd have to find other ways to skirt the problem. 

Most times we stayed at a hotel, which had the restaurant we always ate at on our first night and a cool wave pool. Future aside: other times we made stops --in the summer of 2019, for example, we made some college visits for my sister that were nearby. One year we stopped in Salem and a nearby fishing town that housed the star of my parents' favorite reality shows about tuna fishing, whom we actually met there. (I KNOW, right??) This year, we chose a hotel in Connecticut.

Well, "inn" was more of the word. The Griswold Inn (the name should have been our first warning. National Myers's Summer Vacation anyone?) was a historic, old building where George Washington had stayed once upon a time. This wasn't that impressive to my family; after all, he'd been to many buildings nearby my hometown. A friend of mine literally lived in the town of Washington Crossing right by the Delaware River. Still, being the history fan that my dad was, it had some appeal. 

It definitely looked old, too. With a dark, old tavern-style restaurant, floral wallpaper, and creaky wooden floorboard, it was certainly "quaint" to put in in parental terms. There was no pool, but there was entertainment. This particular evening, a banjo guy was scheduled to perform. 

We could deal with old. It had AC units, comfortable beds, and we even had two rooms. Mom relaxed on the bed in the other room while I SLOWLY finished the newly released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in the other, not wanting it to end.

Or could we?

We had just come from a river boat ride which had been warm. We were all trying to cool down, which took a while with AC units. I slowly worked through Harry Potter, not wanting to be done with the series. Mom relaxed. I don't remember what Dad and Kelly were doing. Emily took a bathroom break. One of the challenges of staying here were the toilets. They were those small little numbers where, unless you're a size zero, you constantly worry about whether you'll have enough space, or hope you don't miss. Apparently this toilet was also cranky in regards to liberal amounts of toilet paper. Emily left a clog behind, but the room didn't come with a plunger. Come to think of it, you never see plungers in hotel rooms, do you? But we had to call down for one, and Dad went to get it. 

It took a few minutes for him to come back. But we were amused by what the plunger came in...

A literal instrument case. Like, something you carry a flute in, only larger. It had its own handle and everything. It was sturdy, and most importantly spared the carrier from the humiliation of being seen carrying a plunger down the hall. 

We fixed the toilet, which fortunately wasn't too bad--though we did get warnings about not using too much toilet paper. We noticed it took a few minutes for him to come back. When he did, my parents were crying in the next room. Did someone die? Was the place haunted? What happened? 

They regaled me with the story. The musical instrument case was so musical that it made my dad look like he was ready to give a concert.  While he was trying to return the plunger, case and all, to the front desk, an old guy in the lobby noticed what he was doing but not how he was doing it. This old man's focus was on the plunger case. He turned to my dad and asked, "Hey, what time are you playing tonight?"

Seeing the banjo banner on the wall, my dad had to explain that no, he was not the hotel's banjo player. Just the plumber. 

We have been making lots of jokes about concerts whenever a toilet backs up now. Musical instrument noises now abound whenever our own toilet backs up. I have a feeling that this inside joke will stay with us for many years to come. We certainly won't forget this summer any time soon!